


An Unexpected Hobbit

by bragisapprentice



Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, If Tolkien wrote about women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-10-22 14:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 49,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10699353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bragisapprentice/pseuds/bragisapprentice
Summary: “The mother of this Hobbit—of Bilbo Baggins, that is—was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took" (The Hobbit).  But what made her so remarkable, and how did Gandalf come to know her in the first place?  What were the powers of Middle Earth doing in the years before the One Ring was rediscovered?  Find out what happens if Bilbo's knack for getting into adventures turns out to have been a family trait!





	1. Chapter 1

 

It was early May in the Shire, a place I expect you need no introduction to, and a young Hobbit lass was meandering along her favorite walk through the woods above the Great Smials.  If you do not know what a Hobbit is, let me advise you now to lay aside this volume and pick up instead the Red Book, begun by Bilbo Baggins and filled out by any number of his friends and relatives, though none of them comes much into this tale.

The particular Hobbit lass who wandered through the woods that May evening was rosy cheeked and curly haired—more or less what you would expect of a Hobbit.  She was plump, but only middlingly so, which was a great detraction to her beauty according to Hobbit standards, and for which she was often teased by her more robust-looking neighbors.  But her yellow-and-green cotton dress hid the defects of her figure, and her dark brown curls, which hung in merry disarray about her laughing face, were quite the envy of her friends.

At the moment, however, nothing could be farther from this Hobbit lass’s mind than the envy of her friends or the esteem of her admirers (of whom she had more than one, though she hardly knew it).  At the moment, she was wholly occupied in composing a new song for her father’s upcoming birthday party.  Ordinarily, such songwriting was the purview of older Hobbit Men, but it bothered her not a whit that she transgressed this rule on two counts, being both a she-Hobbit and a youth into the bargain.  Fortunately, her father was an unusual sort of Hobbit himself, and it bothered him no more than it did her.

She had come quite a way from the large and rambling Hobbit hole the neighbors knew as the Great Smials before she had got any further than, “A better father or a friend, could not be found to Shire’s end” (which proves that, though she loved poetry and song, she was not gifted in the realm of composition).  As she was coming upon the little open field where her father’s pony pastured in the summer, she just thought she would duck out of the path and pass the time of day with him before she went on.

The sun was nearing the western horizon by now—indeed, in the woods it had already nearly disappeared—but the field was bathed in the warm, golden light of evening that only appears in May, and our Hobbit lass stopped at the gate to admire the prospect before her.

Her father’s pony, Old Jem (though he was really not very old by Shire reckoning, for their ponies are hardy and, well cared for, can live a very long time), was standing on the far side of the little paddock with his round dapple-grey belly glowing in the sunset.  She was about to call to him when she stopped herself short.  Old Jem was not alone.

A tall Man was standing in the shadows, with the pony’s nose in his hands and his head bent close to the pony’s face. 

This was not the first horse thief to trouble the Shire, nor even the first horse thief to have come to them from among the Big People of Bree.  But it was the first horse thief to try his hand at his trade when this particular Hobbit lass was nearby, and she immediately determined he would be the last. 

Melting back into the woods (for, as I am sure you remember, Hobbits can move as silently as cats when they wish), she crept around the edge of the pasture until she came to the gap in the trees just outside the fence and right behind the stranger.  Old Jem must have noticed her presence, but though he was ordinarily a very sociable pony, he paid her no heed this evening.  She paused for a moment, observing the thief as he continued to examine Old Jem with great attention.  He wore outlandish clothes, at least by Hobbit reckoning: a grey cloak and a tall hat that hid his face even when he turned half in profile to her.  But she did not need to see his face to make him sorry he ever came to the Shire.

Taking a little leather strap from her belt, she stooped and felt in the earth for an appropriately sized stone.  The ground here was rockier than it looked, and she found one quickly.  Fitting it into her sling, she began to spin it cautiously, fearing that the stranger would hear the whipping sound before she could fire.

But the thief seemed deeply engrossed in his inspection of the pony (can horse thieves in Bree afford to be so particular about the poor beasts they make off with? our Hobbit lass asked herself), and he took no notice of the rapidly increasing whine of leather slicing through the air.

His hand was now on Old Jem’s neck, just in the right position.  The Hobbit took aim and flung the stone at that most tempting of targets.  It whipped through the dusk and struck the thief’s knuckle with a frightful crack.

The stranger gave a great shout and Jem leapt backward with a snort of fright.  Nursing his injury with his other hand, the thief whirled around and shouted, “Belladonna Took!”

As you can imagine, it was a most disconcerting thing to hear her own name from the mouth of a perfect stranger, but our Hobbit lass was armed with another stone in her sling, and she stepped boldly between the rails of the fence to confront her enemy.

I must say she quailed a little when the stranger lifted his face to her and she saw his great white beard and bristling eyebrows, and even more when she saw the eyes that burned like bright green fire underneath them, but Hobbits, as you know, are even hardier than their ponies, and she hesitated only a few heartbeats before she continued forward.

“Explain yourself, Belladonna Took,” the stranger said.  “What do you mean by assaulting poor weary travelers on their way?  What sort of hospitality is this?”

“Pardon me,” she replied with great formality, “but I think I’m the one owed an explanation.  What do _you_ mean by sneaking into a paddock that is not yours, and trying to make off with my father’s horse?  Or didn’t you know you were stealing the horse of the most respected Hobbit in the Shire?”

“I did know, but he is not a horse, and I was not making off with him.  In fact, I was hoping he would carry a message for me, but since you are here now, I suppose you will do just as well.”

Belladonna did not ask him how he had intended Old Jem to carry a message to her father because, hearing that this Big Person was a friend of the family, so to speak, she began to feel a twinge of guilt at having maimed him.  But what was she supposed to think when he came creeping about in the shadows like this?  There were any number of other questions she might have asked at this moment, but the one she settled on was, “What message are you trying to send?”

The stranger was examining his knuckles in the fading light.  “I think you may have broken me,” he said indignantly, “and that is more than many a troll or goblin can say.”

She shifted uncomfortably from one bare foot to the other.  “Is that the message I’m to take?”

“It most certainly is not.  You are to tell Gerontius Took that Gandalf the Grey is waiting for him in the dell above the Great Smials.  I think you won’t have to say any more than that.”

“Gandalf!”  Belladonna had never met him in person, but all the Tooks knew the name and the fame of the wandering wizard who had more than once swept Gerontius off on mysterious adventures, from which he generally returned with a good deal less weight under his belt and a good deal more gold hanging off it.  Was the wizard here to spirit him away again?

“You have the name right,” Gandalf said impatiently.  “And I have yours, Belladonna.  When you were born I asked your father what he meant, naming his eldest daughter after deadly nightshade, and he said, ‘Just wait, old friend.  She’s got the fire of the Tooks in her blood, and she’ll be the cause of all sorts of wonderful chaos when she’s grown.’  I see now he was not wrong.”  He massaged his wounded hand pointedly.  “Have you forgot the rest of the message, or will you be going?”

This was all a little much for a peaceful May evening in the woods of the Shire, and Belladonna had to take a moment to collect herself.  “I apologize for your hand,” she said at last, still standing on her dignity, “though I dare say I’d do the same if I came upon another stranger taking such unwarranted interest in my father’s pony.  But won’t you come to the Smials with me and let me make amends by dressing your hand?  I’m sure it’s not broken—it was only a little stone and I didn’t throw it very hard.”

Gandalf looked doubtful about that, but he suffered himself to be led back through the woods and around to the front of the hill that housed the Took family home.  The Great Smials was not so much a Hobbit hole as it was a Hobbit warren: there were three main doors—round and brightly painted, as was the Hobbit way—and they opened onto passage after passage and room after room, all neatly swept and modestly decorated, delving deeper and deeper into the hill behind.

And all that room was necessary, for Gerontius and Adamanta Took had a large and merry family: eight hearty Hobbit lads and three hearty Hobbit lasses, of all ages from eight to thirty-eight.  Belladonna was not the eldest of his children, but at eighteen she was the eldest of his surviving daughters, and as such she had something of a pride of place in her father’s heart.  (I must remind you, should you be wondering at either the large number or the great age range of the Took offspring, that Hobbits live much longer than we Big People do, and they are, as a rule, very fond of children, being not unlike children themselves in their pursuits and their delights.  And even Isengrim, the eldest, was only just reaching the point in life when the neighbors were starting to think he ought to settle down and start a family of his own.)

When Belladonna brought in her guest, all the family was at home, and great was the commotion when Gerontius learned who was in his entryway and Adamanta learned that her daughter had assaulted him with a slingshot.  For a good while, Gandalf could not make himself heard over the delighted exclamations of the one (“What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”  “And how is old So-and-So?”  “What brings you back to these parts?”—all questions which Gerontius could not stop long enough to hear answered) and the ministrations of the other (“Do sit down, sir.”  “May I take your hat?”  “Belladonna, put the kettle on.”  “Mirabella, fetch the witch hazel.”).

But at length the wizard’s hand was bandaged, the family was seated round their great long table in the dining room, and a handsome supper was set out for the whole party.  Belladonna was seated next to Gandalf, to atone for herself by cutting his meat for him and buttering his bread, which he could not very well do with only one good hand.  So she was privy to all that her father said to the wizard as the roast and the potatoes made their rounds.  She very much hoped that Gerontius would, in his enthusiasm, let slip the details of his old adventures in Gandalf’s company, which she had often heard referred to but never heard in their entirety, as Hobbits like to have stories told.

And Gerontius seemed in a fair way to oblige his daughter, as he reminisced in fragmented speeches about treasure hunts and warg raids and—most intriguing of all—an Orc battle in a place called Moria.  But as Gandalf chewed and nodded, letting the Hobbit prattle on, Gerontius gradually grew contemplative, and his chatter slackened.

“Those were splendid days,” he said with wistful finality.  “Weren’t they, Gandalf?”

“More splendid in the remembering than in the doing, if I am any judge,” the wizard replied.  “You leave out a good deal of short commons and hard beds and lost friends.”

Gerontius stole a look at Adamanta, who reached out to pat her husband’s hand.  “Aye, I reckon you’re right, Gandalf, as usual.  And there have been some splendid times since then as well.  You remember my sons, Isengrim, Isumbras, Hildigrim, Isembold, Hildifons, Isembard, and Hildibrand.”  (By this you can see that the Gerontius was a little un-Hobbit-like even in matters like the naming of his children.)  And though the wizard no doubt remembered them quite well, he gave each a polite “how-do-you-do” nod as Gerontius pointed them out.  “And my daughters…well, Belle you’ve met.  And this is Donnamira and Mirabella.”

“And I’m Isengar!” the youngest boy piped up.  “He always forgets me because I come after all the girls.”

“I don’t forget you, my lad,” Gerontius said fondly, ruffling the child’s hair.  “I save the best for last.”

“It is a pleasure, O splendors of the house of Took,” said the wizard, taking them all in with a courteous bow, but dipping his head especially low for little Isengar.  “And seeing you seated with your family all round your table, Gerontius, I almost hesitate to go forward with the purpose of my visit, for I fear that purpose is nothing less than the disruption of your family peace.”

“Perhaps, then,” said Adamanta calmly, “your business might wait until after pudding.”  By which, of course, she meant “after the young ones have been sent to bed,” but we all know how serious Hobbits are about their dinners, and no doubt she meant it literally as well.

Gandalf agreed and, seemingly lightened by the delay, he laughed merrily at the story told by Isembold and Hildifons about an escaped pig on the Hobbit farm next door, and he presented young Isengar with an iridescent blue ball that never fell down rabbit holes or got stuck in trees, no matter how hard you threw it.

He did not grow grave again until he, Gerontius, Adamanta, and the eldest children were seated round the fire in their cozy parlor after supper.  Belladonna secured permission to stay, when the younger siblings were sent off to dress for bed, by pointing out that she could light and maintain the wizard’s pipe for him and thus prove useful without getting under foot.

Gandalf blew several rather splendid smoke rings, which he watched floating about the ceiling as though they held some secret meaning for him, before he made up his mind to speak.

“Gerontius,” he said at last, “I came here to ask you to join me in another adventure.”

I knew it, Belladonna said to herself, but she said nothing aloud for fear of being sent out of the room.

Gerontius’s hand went instinctively to his belt, where in his wandering days he had worn a little dagger, but the dagger had been put away in a chest many years ago, and he would need Adamanta to tell him where it was, as he had no head for keeping track of things.  Nevertheless, he leaned forward in his rocking chair.  “Where to this time, Gandalf?”

The wizard blew another smoke ring and looked through it at the Hobbit.  “I can’t say.”

“Nay, Gandalf, we’re all trusty here,” Gerontius said, waving his hand around at his wife and family.

“You misunderstand me.  I did not say, ‘I won’t say.’  I said, ‘I can’t say.’  And I can’t say because I don’t know.  I know only the mission, not where it will take us.”

The hand went to the empty belt again.  “What’s the mission then?” he asked eagerly.

“To find someone who is lost.”

Gerontius fell back in his rocker.  “Is that all?  Goodness me, Gandalf, from all your mystery I thought for sure the Orcs had overrun the North Downs, or at least that there were wargs crossing the Brandywine.”

“There may be, for all I know,” said the wizard, “for the world is more perilous than you Shirefolk realize.  But for now, the mission is to find someone who is lost, wherever he may be, and to recover him, if he can be recovered.”

“Who is he?” asked Isengrim, the eldest, who had inherited something of his father’s impetuousness.

The wizard hesitated.  “I will only say that he is a person worthy of being found, and undeserving of the hardships he has faced in his lifetime.  Let that be enough for you, for it may endanger you to know any more at the moment.”  He turned back to Gerontius.  “Well, my friend, will you take up your walking stick and set off with me once more?”

To Belladonna’s surprise, her father did not answer right away.  His hands closed into fists on the arms of his chair, as though he were ready to go fisticuffs against unknown enemies.  But at the same time, he cast his eyes around the room and his ruddy Hobbit face softened.  His gaze rested on Adamanta at last, and in the way of people long married, Belle knew she was reading his feelings and he was reading hers, without either saying a word.  He looked back at Gandalf.

“I think my wandering days are over, my friend.  Did you know they’ve started to call me the Old Took?  I’m only sixty years old, but I suppose a youth spent adventuring tends to age one a bit, and I admit I can feel the creaking of my bones on cold mornings now.  But it’s not just that.  I have a duty here, Gandalf, greater than any duty I had on the road long ago.  Adamanta kept the home fires burning in those early years, and a hard time she had of it, too.  We lost little Hildigard that first winter I was away, and Adamanta all alone to bear it herself.  Yet I don’t doubt that if I wanted to go with you now, she would see me off with my best coat on my back and my sword well polished.  But I wouldn’t feel right about it.  It’s time I did my duty to home and family.  My place is here—and what’s more, my heart is here—and here is where I shall stay.”

Belladonna did not know what to expect from the wizard as he heard his old friend give surely the most difficult speech he had ever had to utter, but Gandalf did not argue.  His eyes traveled round the circle of Hobbits, and his head nodded very slowly, as though he were unaware of it.

“You are quite right, my friend.  There are adventures abroad and adventures at home, though they look very different from one another, and you have chosen perhaps the better of the two.”  He drew a deep breath.  “But the one who is lost still needs finding; that is the adventure I have been dealt, and I foresee that I cannot do it alone.  Who will go in your stead, Gerontius?”

“I’ll go,” said Isengrim immediately, leaping to his feet in his eagerness.

“And I’ll go,” said Isumbras, the second eldest, following his brother’s lead.

Adamanta clasped her hands in her lap, but she said nothing: she knew the Tooks too well to attempt to stop one once his mind was made up.

“There, Gandalf!” cried Gerontius.  “You can’t do better than these two lads.  Strong and hardy and, I dare say, braver than their father ever was.”  His hand felt for his dagger again as he thought of the road that lay ahead of them.

“I accept your offer with humble thanks,” said Gandalf, bowing.  “Ready your bags and your ponies, if you have them, and we will depart at dawn.

Isengrim and Isumbras slapped each other excitedly on the back and accepted their father’s congratulations with a glow of pride.

To the end of her days, Belladonna did not know what possessed her at that moment—whether madness or fate—but in the midst of the hubbub, she stood up and said quietly, “I’ll go too.”

The noise died like a candle being blown out.  They all turned to stare at her: her mother, her father, her brothers, and most of all, the wizard.

“Whatever do you mean, Belle?” Gerontius asked.

“I mean I’ll go with Gandalf,” she repeated, and she could think of nothing more to say for herself than that.

Her brothers protested vociferously; they had no intention of sharing the glory of adventure with their little sister, and she not even of age.  They pleaded with their mother to intervene, but Adamanta knew the Tooks too well to attempt to stop one once her mind was made up.

In all the disorder that ensued, Gandalf remained silent, contemplating the rosy face of our Hobbit lass, now uncharacteristically grave.  His fingers absently stroked the bandage on his injured hand.

“I accept,” he said at last.  “Welcome to our company, Belladonna Took.  Pack your things and be ready to depart at dawn.”

“Belle, do you really mean to go?” Gerontius asked, rising and taking her hands in his.

“I do mean to go,” she said yet again.

He searched her eyes, and the look of worry might have broken her heart—or at least her resolve—if he had not quite suddenly burst out with a laugh.  “I don’t know why I’m surprised.  Go, my girl, and do your father proud.”

Finally Belladonna smiled, and she looked herself again.  “I will, Father, I promise.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was all well and good when Belladonna and her brothers sat in comfort in the parlor at Great Smials volunteering for adventure. But what happens when the adventure actually begins?

Probably none of the Hobbits of the Great Smials slept much that night; Gandalf may not have either, but if he slept poorly, he did not complain in the morning when they all got up with first light and began their preparations for the momentous departure.

Belladonna was actually the first of them all to be ready, for she had very little to pack—not even a pipe or a pocket knife.  She had no pony either, and she was just beginning to fret over how she would keep up when she heard a loud nickering on the front doorstep.  A sturdy dun-colored horse was stooping his great head to look in through the open door.  Beside him was Old Jem, looking smaller and rounder than usual next to his tall companion.

“Good,” Gandalf said, rising from his seat at the table.  “Thrush has arrived just on time, and he’s brought your pony with him, Gerontius.  I suppose you have no objection to our taking him with us?”

The Old Took actually let out a sigh of relief.  “Of course not, my dear Gandalf!  Whatever you need.  In fact, I was ever so worried about transport.  I was out this morning to buy ponies for all three of you, but I could only get two from old Bodger Proudfoot, and I didn’t think we would have time to fetch in Old Jem before you left.  Now everyone shall have a good travel companion.”

The wizard, the Old Took, and the boys went outside to begin loading the ponies, and for a long while there was too much chaos for anybody to get very wistful about the coming separation.  Adamanta disappeared for a short while and returned carrying not just Gerontius’s old dagger but a second one almost as old, and these she fell to polishing vigorously in the yard.

Because she was already prepared to go, Belladonna wandered restlessly through the passages and rooms of her home, taking leave of them, so to speak.  She gave her best hat to Donnamira and her newest pinafore to Mirabella (knowing she would have no need for them on an adventure), and perhaps they shed a few tears on each other’s shoulders, but Belle suspected that deep down both her sisters wished they were going as well.  They were Tooks, after all.

Belledonna’s wanderings eventually led her back into the parlor where Gandalf had blown smoke rings and disturbed the family peace the night before.  She found herself gazing at the great sheet of parchment hung over the fireplace, on which Gerontius had drawn out the Took family tree.  Hobbits are, you will remember, indifferent to many areas of inquiry, but they never tire in the study of genealogy.  There were all her siblings’ names, in a neat line from Isengrim to Isengar, in the middle of the page, with the years of their birth penned carefully underneath each one.  They were only halfway down the sheet, Gerontius said, because he had left room to add in their children and their children’s children, if he grew old enough to know them.  Abruptly, Belle realized that none of them, now, could be perfectly confident about having the opportunity to meet the next generation, much less produce it.  It was the first time she thought that perhaps she was doing a very foolish thing indeed.

But her thoughts were drawn away from such gloomy paths by the sound of Isengar calling her name in the passage.  It was time to go.

Belle took affectionate leave of all her siblings and an especially affectionate leave of her mother, to whom she felt infinite gratitude for not having opposed her decision to answer Gandalf’s call.  Last of all she took leave of her father, who squeezed her tight in a Hobbit bear-hug and whispered in her ear, “I’m more worried for you than for the others, my dear.”

“Why, papa?”

“Because you have no dagger,” he explained.  I gave mine to Grim—he’s the eldest, and I felt obliged.  And the other dagger is the wrong length for you, so I gave it to Brassy.  How will you manage?”

Belladonna patted his shoulders reassuringly and held up her slingshot, which she always carried with her anyway.

“Will that be enough?” he asked dubiously.

“It will for me,” she said.  “I wouldn’t know what to do with a dagger anyway.”

He returned the patting of shoulders, seemingly satisfied.  Then he held her at arm’s length as though he were only just now noticing what travel clothes she had put on.  “My dear, must you wear trousers?”

“Well, why not?” she asked.

He cast a sideways glance at Gandalf, who in his long grey robe was having a few parting words with Adamanta.  “The wizard’s wearing a dress.  Why can’t you?”

Belladonna laughed.  “The wizard may do what he pleases, but I prefer to ride in comfort.”

Gerontius shook his head.  “Embarrassing girl,” he said with great affection.  Then he kissed hear heartily on the cheek and held her pack as she scrambled onto Old Jem’s bare back.

“Be careful,” both he and Adamanta said together as the little party started out on the path out of Tuckborough.

“Be well,” Gandalf called back, and Belladonna noted that he made no promises about care.

 

At first the brothers spurred their ponies into an energetic trot, which carried them and their rattling baggage quite a way ahead of the wizard, who kept pace with Old Jem’s patient walk.

“Do they know where we’re going?” Belladonna asked as the lads whooped and broke into a gallop over an open field.

“They know we’re going first to Bree,” the wizard replied.  “If they reach it so far ahead of us that they’re ready to carry on before we arrive, they can find their own adventure and we two will go on with our business.”

But he did not seem really annoyed at the youthful high spirits, and when all four travelers stopped for a midday meal, he even agreed to be their second if they found themselves obliged to do any dueling on the way.

The first part of their journey was easy, as it often is in such cases: once they reached the East Road, they traveled at a comfortable pace through the Shire (for no matter how enthusiastic the brothers were, their ponies had soon had enough of jogging under their heavy packs), and by evening of the first day they had already reached Frogmorton.  They spent the night at the inn there—a comfortable place presided over by a comfortable Hobbit woman with a bright white apron and a huge cap on her head trimmed with equally bright lace.

If Gandalf was cramped in the Hobbit bed, he did not complain, and if Thrush was cramped in the pony stall, he said not a word.  They all started out again in the morning as chipper as they began the day before—or perhaps more so, because they had not had the bittersweet prospect of saying goodbye to mar their enjoyment of breakfast.

They traveled easily along the East Road all day, singing songs and composing poetry as they went, and by evening, they reached the fabled Brandywine Bridge.

Only at this point did Isengrim’s spirits falter a bit.  He was in the lead, and he stopped his pony just short of the bridge.  There he stayed, watching the water play under the pylons, until the others rode up behind him.  At that point, he turned in his saddle and gave them a rueful smile. 

“The Great Beyond awaits,” he said, and even over the sound of the river, they could hear the nervous tension in his voice.

Isumbras reached out to thump his brother on the shoulder.  “Don’t worry, Grim.  It’s only Bree.”  And he trotted out onto the bridge no Took but the Old Took had ever crossed.

“Is that what he’s called when he’s at home?” the wizard asked as they followed.  “Grim?”

“Well,” said Belladonna, “there are a lot of Isens in the family.”  She pointed to Isumbras.  “Generally we call him Brassy.  And, yes, we call him Grim…or Grimy.  Which he doesn’t much like.”

The wizard laughed.  “I imagine he wouldn’t.  And you’re Belle when you’re not out breaking people’s knuckles?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile, “I’m Belle.”

 

They would not reach the really large inns until Bree, the town of Men, Dwarves, and Hobbits that stood at the crossing of the East-West and North-South Roads, but there were several taverns here as well, on the borders of Buckland, and Gandalf secured lodging for the party in one of these for the night.  The Hobbit who ran this one had a decidedly less-white apron on, and he wore no cap.  When Isumbras complained of their lukewarm reception, Gandalf said, “If this is the least friendly figure we meet in our travels, I will rescind the title of adventure and call it a holiday.”

The next morning, they loaded their ponies again and set off an hour or two after first light.  They reached Bree two evenings later, and the Hobbit lads and the Hobbit lass had their first sight of many novel things: a real town crisscrossed by dozens of bustling streets, Big People not just in pairs but in groups as large as a dozen, and the solemn bearded Dwarves engaged in business with the merchants in the square.

Now, it is a fact well known to those who have any reason to think of it that small people never feel small except in comparison to bigger people, and the same is true of Hobbits.  Though Belle and her brothers knew they were smaller than the Men of Bree, they did not think much about it in their day-to-day lives.  But here, surrounded by houses that were too big for them and horses that were too tall for them, and even tables that were too high for them, they suddenly felt very small indeed.

“And if this is just Bree,” Belle thought to herself, “how will we ever make our way in what lies beyond?”

Bree was the site of many interesting happenings in later years, but when Gandalf and the Tooks stayed at the Prancing Pony that May evening, it was still a peaceable little district on the outskirts of what Men considered the only realms of interest: their own.  Rohan and Arnórian lay to the south, Esgaroth lay to the east, in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain.  Bree was the only settlement of any importance this far north or west, and in comparison to Minas Tirith or Edoras, it was not much more than a trading post.

It was plenty large for Belle and her brothers, though, and they were happy enough to leave it behind two days later, with their ponies rested and their saddlebags well supplied, for the less trafficked hill country south of the town. 

“You may learn to look back on Bree with different feelings,” Gandalf warned them, “when you’ve missed a few meals and slept a few nights with nothing but your packs for a pillow.”

These seemed grave foretellings indeed, but it was hard to feel oppressed while they rode well-supplied under a bright morning sun with buttercups in the grass on either side of them.  And, in fact, they missed neither meals nor beds during the first week of their journey from Bree, for they were on well-traveled roads (first the Andrath Greenway and then the North-South Road itself), and they always managed to find an inn or a friendly farmer who would offer them stew for their bowls and blankets for their beds.  And Gandalf was always ready to beguile the long days with story, song, or smoke rings, though he never seemed to tell them anything about himself.  Belle, bobbing along on Old Jem in a bored half-slumber, began to think that adventures were not so very adventurous after all.

But then they came to Tharbad, where the North-South Road passed over the Greyflood, and at the bridge, Gandalf said, “Have a good meal at the inn tonight, my fine Hobbits, for this is where we part ways with the road, and we shall have to make do with what we can carry for many days.”

This clouded their spirits, of course—you recall how devoted Hobbits are to their meals—but at the same time, Belladonna felt a little spark light up deep inside her.  This is what she had been waiting for.

 

Of course, the moment one begins to anticipate an adventure is the very moment least likely to deliver one.  The following morning, in a wet grey mist, Gandalf led the Tooks out of the inn-yard, out of the center of Tharbad, off the North-South Road, and into…

“A swamp!” Grim cried when his pony stepped on a lump of turf and sank in up to his knees.

“Have we missed our way?” Belle asked.  She hopped down from Old Jem and helped her brothers extricate Grim’s alarmed beast from the mud.

“Missed our way,” scoffed Gandalf.  “Do you think so little of me as to guess that I would lose my way not sixty miles from the Shire?”

“So you’re just trying to drown our ponies, then,” Grim said.  He was more cross than he might otherwise have been, because he had slipped during the rescue operation and was now just as muddy as his horse.

“Neither.  I am taking you to the Glanduin, but in order to reach it, we must pick our way among the marshes and tributary streams that feed it.”  A little clod of mud, shaken from the pony’s nose, landed on the wizard’s knee, and he flicked it off calmly with a long finger.  “If you’ll let me go first, Master Took, I don’t think you need fear for your ponies’ lives just yet.”

“Yet?” Belle repeated, but then she remembered that she had signed on for an adventure after all.  “Don’t worry, Jem,” she whispered into the pony’s fuzzy grey ear, “I’ll get you home safe if ever I can.”

For three days they slogged through the marshes, often with brown, slimy water lapping their feet as their horses waded through low-lying areas.  But true to his word, Gandalf kept them out of the really treacherous places, and he even managed to find high ground for them to sleep on during the nights.

On the fourth day, they reached the Glanduin.

“I must say I thought it would be a bit grander,” Brassy commented as they paused on the bank of the slow-moving river.  It was not farther across than Belladonna could have cast a stone from her sling, and it was shallow enough that the water made loud, merry music on the rocks that jutted everywhere from the surface.

“It gets grander,” Gandalf promised, “but don’t judge by appearances.  This little river has its source in the Misty Mountains themselves, and it is the twin of Nimrodel, which springs from the same source but flows east, through the woods of Lórien and into the great river Anduin.  And the Anduin flows all the way from the Ered Mithrin in the far north to the sea in the far south.”

Isumbras had not made a great study of geography as a young Hobbit, and his eyes grew wide at the mythic-sounding names.  “Will we see all those places?”

Gandalf gave him an affectionate smile.  “I cannot say.  I hope one day Hobbits will see much more even than that.”

They followed the stream eastward for a full day before they found a place to ford it.  Still Gandalf had not told them where they were going; the brothers seemed not to care, and Belle was determined not to be the first to ask.

It was in the twilight hour of the following day when adventure finally found our four travelers.  They had halted on a green swath between the river and a wood, and they were just unloading the ponies for the night.  Grim was doing his best to start a fire with the damp twigs they harvested at the edge of the forest.

“If you’d let me go under the trees a little further,” he said as he lit his third match, “I could get some kindling that’s properly dry.”

“I would not advise going into the woods tonight,” Gandalf said.  “Something troubles me about them.”

Belle put down the pack she had pulled from Thrush’s saddle.  “What’s wrong with them?” she asked.

Gandalf tore his eyes from the darkness under the trees to look at her.  “Well, nothing in their nature, I suppose.  Woods are woods, neither good nor evil.  But things _in_ the woods, and things woods are used _for_ …”

“Oh good,” Brassy said brightly, “we’ve found a philosopher.  Don’t worry about the fire, Grimy, we’ve got a philosopher to take care of things.”

“Impudent Took,” Gandalf muttered.

Belle had stopped listening to the banter.  Now that they had been brought to her attention, the woods did give her an odd feeling.  The Tooks are not as fond of forests as the Brandybucks of Buckland, but Belle had spent much of her childhood roaming the little copse near the Great Smials, even after dark, and never had she felt about those trees as she did about these.

“No,” she corrected herself.  “Gandalf is right.  It isn’t the trees.  It’s…”

She was interrupted by a horrible, guttural sound and the flash of a huge, dark grey body as it burst from the darkness and bowled her over.  As she fell, her flailing hands grasped fur and muscle and bone and teeth.

“Wolves!” she tried to shout, but the creature’s heavy front feet landed on her chest just as she hit the ground, and all the wind was knocked out of her lungs.  She could only lie gasping as the enormous beast sprang off of her and swept over the ground toward her brothers.

Half a dozen more wolves poured out of the dark, and so intent were they on attacking the camp that they rushed right past Belladonna, who flattened herself to the earth until they were past.  By that time, they were upon Grim and Isumbras, who shouted their alarm before going down under the hairy beasts.

One lunged at Gandalf, pinning him against Thrush, who crashed down on his side with the wizard on top of him and the wolf on top of both.

Belle stumbled to her feet, still trying to draw breath.  There was a yelp by the unlit campfire—one of the wolves was down!  Grim had stabbed it with his father’s dagger.  The Hobbit lad immediately scrambled up and threw himself on top of the wolf that had pinned his brother.

Never had Belladonna more wished for a good, strong blade.  Cursing her ill preparations, she ran to the riverbank and plunged her fingers into the mud frantically.  One stone.  Two stones.  Three.  Five.  There was another yelp behind her as Grim took down his second foe.  She sprinted back up to the camp and fitted a stone in her sling.

The first shot struck the wolf on top of Gandalf.  She could do little harm against their thick-furred pelts, but she could surprise and frighten them.  The wolf stopped mid-snarl and spun around, looking for what had struck him.  Another stone stung his nose and sent him scurrying off with his tail between his legs.

By now Gandalf was on his feet, and Thrush was not much slower.  Another wolf was coming at them from behind, but Thrush heard him before even the wizard did, and a sharp blow from his powerful back legs caught the creature in its throat.  It crumpled without even a sound.

But someone was screaming.  Belle turned about in a panic, looking for her brothers in the flurry of earth and fur.  It wasn’t her brothers: it was Old Jem!  With his feet already hobbled for the night, he was spinning around helplessly, trying to keep a great grey wolf from leaping onto his back.  Whack!  Another stone struck hard on the wolf’s hip bone, and it ran off on three legs.  Whack!   Yet another hit home on a wolf in mid-air as it leapt at Jem’s withers. 

There was a sudden silence. 

“Is that all of them?” Grim gasped.

Gandalf now had his staff in his hands, holding it as one would a cudgel.  “Is anyone hurt?” he demanded.  “Where’s Belladonna?”

“I’m here,” she said, taking a step forward.  She only just registered the looks of terror on the faces of her friends when she felt a rush of air and the thud of padded feet on the earth behind her.

The wolf sped right past her, close enough to touch, and swept straight toward the tall form of Gandalf.  His staff barred the way, but the wolf flung itself into the air and came crashing down on the wizard.  They went down together—there was a flash of light and a sound like a thunderclap…and when the Tooks could see again, there was the creature lying dead, with Gandalf underneath it.

“Is he alive?” Grim asked as Belle ran up to drag the wolf off his body.  No sooner did she roll the enormous creature into the grass than she heard the wizard gasp and stir.

“Gandalf!” they all cried.

“Yes, that’s still my name,” he said grumpily, picking up his crushed hat and beating it back into shape.  “I repeat, is anyone hurt?”

“A small bite to the forearm,” Brassy confessed, showing the wizard what looked to Belladonna like a rather ghastly wound.

Gandalf clucked his tongue the way their mother used to when they tore holes in the knees of their britches.  “Never mind, young fellow.  Go wash it in the stream and we shall bind it up for you.  It will heal nicely.”

Brassy’s face fell.  “Won’t I at least have a nice scar to show for it?”

The wizard laughed.  “I dare say.”  Then his face grew grave again.  “Now, what was all this about?”

Belle knew he was not speaking to her, but she wanted to know as urgently as he did.  “These were wargs, weren’t they?” she said.

The wizard nodded, deep in thought.  “Northern wargs, from the sound of it.”

“What, they speak?” Grim said.

“Didn’t you hear them?”

“I heard them snarling and growling like any wild dog.”

“They speak.  Oh yes, wargs speak, if someone frightens them or starves them or tortures them long enough to teach them how to do so.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Belle interrupted.

Gandalf gave her a glance before continuing.  “But if these are northern wargs, what were they doing down here?  And why would the survivors go that way, over open country, quite away from the wood, in the opposite direction of their home?”

“Do you think they’ll come back?” Grim asked.

“No,” Gandalf said slowly, “not tonight, at least.  They’ve been routed, several of them slain, and I myself know what it is to suffer a shot from Belladonna’s sling.”  She blushed, not without pride.  “But I think it will be worse for us if they don’t return.”

“Why is that?” they all asked at once.

“Because then we will know that they weren’t merely hunting, but that they had a mission, and when that mission was done—successful or not—they were expected to bring report back.”

“To whom?” Belle asked.

“That is yet to be seen.  But we will not answer that question by puzzling over it now.  Get the fire going, Grim, and I’ll bandage you up as soon as you’ve washed, Isumbras.  Belladonna, see to the ponies and make sure none of them are hurt.”

Belle went first to Thrush, who was sweating and bruised from his fall but otherwise unhurt.  Her brothers’ ponies had been spared any close encounters, and though they were shaking still with fear, they would be fine by morning.  Old Jem Belle examined minutely, from nose to tail and forelock to fetlock.  Amazingly, he was completely whole.  But he gave Belle a reproachful look, and she apologized several times for hobbling him and wound up promising never to do so again.

By the time she was finished with her ministrations to the animals, Gandalf was deeply involved in anointing her brother’s wound with a yellow salve he had produced from one of his many hidden pockets, and Grim was bent over the firewood trying once again to banish the dark of the night.  She left them to their work, drawn back by a strange curiosity to the edge of the woods.  They did not feel menacing now, and in the dark undergrowth she heard the chirping of crickets and the chatter of a squirrel.  These were woods like those she knew and understood.

Then she heard something else.  A squeak of sorts, followed by a snuffling sound.  She braced herself for another attack, and her hand went to the sling she had strung back through her belt.  But she did not run away.

Gandalf noticed her just in time to hear her give a cry of surprise and dash under the eaves of the night-dark woods.

“Belladonna Took!” he shouted after her.

But she came back out almost immediately, with a large furry bundle tucked under each arm.

“What in the South Farthing…?” Brassy began, but he did not manage to finish his thought.

“They were in the bracken all this time,” Belle said, setting the two warg pups on the ground by their bed rolls.  “Surely that was their mother.”  She pointed at the grey creature Gandalf had slain, the only she-wolf among the dead beasts.

“Shall we drown them, Gandalf?” Grim asked, forgetting again about the fire.

“Standing on my sealed coffin!” Belle said, which is what Hobbits say instead of “over my dead body.”

“Don’t be sentimental, Belle,” Isumbras said, taking the big-brotherly tone that he only attempted when he was agreeing with his older brother against his younger sisters.  “They’re a menace.”

“You’re afraid of _that_?” she retorted, pointing to the larger of the two pups, who that very instant had opened his mouth in a pink yawn that showed only the tips of a few, tiny teeth.

“You want to make pets of them?” Grim asked.  “You think they’ll look nice with pretty red ribbons around their necks?  Come, Belle.  Even if it were possible, they’d kill you in your sleep as soon as they got big enough.”

“There are animals enough in the Great Smials with all you boys.  I’m not looking to make pets of them, just bring them along until we can find a safe home for them.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Grim said.  “Their mother just tried to _eat you_.”  He stood up, one hand on his dagger.  “Look, I’m not a cruel Hobbit.  But I’m not a crazy one either.  I’ll do it quickly,” he promised.

Belle squared off and raised her fists.  She had no more stones for her sling, but this would not be the first time she went fisticuffs with her older brothers.  “Take one more step, Isengrim Took, and I’ll break your nose.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Gandalf, suddenly stepping forward.  They had almost forgotten he was there.  “Sheath your dagger, Grim.  Belladonna, put up your fists.  The pups can stay.”

“Why?” the Hobbit lads demanded.

Belle answered for him, still too heated to subside into the background.  “Because it’s not their fault some Big Person starved or tortured their family into learning how to speak and then sent them off to die on some mission that was never theirs to begin with.”  She looked down at the pups, already half in love with them.  “Besides, it’s our fault they’re orphans.  Surely we owe them something for their mother.”

“Quite right,” Gandalf said.  “And besides that, something tells me that these two might prove useful, somewhere down the road.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Grim said, but he put his dagger away and went back to his fire-building.

“If I wake up with my windpipe bitten in two, I’m coming back to haunt you, Belle,” said Brassy cheerfully.

“And they’re not having any of my rations,” Grim said over his shoulder.

Belle did not say anything in response; she only gave Gandalf a look of gratitude before sweeping the two furry creatures into her arms and taking them to bed with her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having added two four-footed companions to their company, it is now time for Belladonna and her brothers to meet some of Gandalf's old acquaintances and discover the aim of their quest!

The pups did not bite anyone’s windpipe that night, though the problem of what exactly to do with them once the sun came up did occur to Belladonna when she woke with one of them sucking hungrily on her fingers.  Fortunately she discovered that, though they were a little young to exist solely on meat, they did seem very much to like cheese, and from that moment on, she dedicated her daily ration to her new charges.

How to transport them was another matter, for Old Jem made it clear that he was none too fond of having the predatory-smelling creatures bundled into saddlebags and slung over his back.  But Belle coaxed and bribed and flattered the pony until he consented to be their legs until their own were strong enough to carry them.

“What will you call them?” Gandalf asked as they set off.

Belle stroked their heads, which were as soft as the heads of the puppies she had grown up with.  “I’ll call the dark one Foxglove, and the lighter one—the girl—I’ll call Lily.  Did you see they each have a white toe, just like a flower petal?”

Grim scoffed at her.  “Why not just call them Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-Tail?”

“Because there aren’t three of them,” she replied calmly.

“They’re good names,” Gandalf said, and that was the end of the debate.

 

They traveled another full day in the river valley, moving slowly and warily, yet they met no further dangers.  The next afternoon the sky once more grew dark and heavy with rain, and Belle held the pups on her lap under her traveling cloak.  They were drier than she was, in fact, though she rode with her head bowed down to keep the rain out of her eyes.

Because she was watching the ground, she did not see what her brothers saw that made them pull their ponies up sharp.  Old Jem, who was also walking with his head down to keep the rain from his eyes, quite blundered into the hindquarters of Brassy’s pony, making it snort indignantly. 

Belle looked up.  In front of them was a wall of rugged rock, which rose abruptly out of the earth and towered high above them, so that its top was obscured by the lowering clouds.  The river that fed all the marshes they had crossed now roared out in a single channel from a cleft in the stone.

“Is this a dead end?” Brassy asked, looking up with his mouth open.

“It is the beginning,” Gandalf said.  “This is the first foothill of the Misty Mountains, and from here we turn north to find the gates of Moria.”

“Moria!” the Hobbits repeated.  They knew the name of the Dwarf stronghold, but they knew only to connect it to a hazy adventure somewhere deep in their father’s past.

“Moria,” Gandalf confirmed.  “And the sooner we arrive, the sooner we dry off.  Onward, my Hobbits!”  And he spurred Thrush to their left, away from the river and northward along the sheer rock wall.

For three more days they journeyed, now slowly indeed, for their road began to travel upward along the slopes of the foothills, and a narrow, stony road it was.  All the while, of course, Foxglove and Lily were laying hold of Belladonna’s heart as all infant creatures do to people who appreciate them, and first Gandalf and then Brassy took to playing with the pups when the party stopped to rest.  Grim continued to mock his sister for her nonsensical affections, but when Belle caught him sneaking a little cheese to Foxglove when he thought no one was looking, she knew he had been won over as well.

 

They climbed high above the valley below them; they climbed right up into the clouds, and at nightfall on the third day, their road left them at the foot of a waterfall that poured from a shelf of rock above.

“How could there be a river this high up?” Isumbras asked.  He had always been interested in how things worked.

“There are springs even in the hills,” Gandalf said, “as I’ve told you before.  And we are not so high as you think.  The clouds make even small things loom large.”

“Then Brassy ought to stay in the clouds all the time, and be counted a great giant among Hobbits,” Grim laughed.  You can see he had recovered his good humor at the same time as he regained his charity.

“Who goes there?” came a gruff voice from above them.

“Gandalf the Grey and his three companions,” the wizard called back.

Looking up, the party saw the outline of two Dwarf hoods against the sky.  “Gandalf the Grey?  We’ve been expecting you these two months!”

The wizard was unperturbed.  “Others have waited longer, I assure you.  But you have been expecting me, and I am here now, and that must be enough.”

The Dwarves disappeared for a few seconds and then reappeared on a steep set of stairs beside the falls. They approached, holding torches in their hands, and one of them bowed low.  “Frar and Frag, at your service.”  Belladonna was not sure which Dwarf was which.

“Isengrim, Isumbras, and Belladonna Took at yours,” Grim said, bowing likewise from his pony.

Foxglove chose this moment to pop his head out of his saddlebag to sniff inquiringly in the direction of the strangers.  His sister quickly followed his lead.

“And, er, Foxglove and Lily, at your service,” Belladonna added, seeing the Dwarves’ eyes turned toward the pups.

“Any friend of Gandalf is welcome in our halls,” said Frar (or Frag) dubiously.  “But we do not hold with wolves.”

“The wolves enter with Gandalf or Gandalf does not enter,” the wizard said, still unruffled.

The Dwarves hesitated, but of course they did not seriously consider refusing entry to someone long awaited by their leaders.  In the end, they only asked that Belle keep the pups in their saddlebags.

“The ponies cannot come with us, though,” Gandalf pointed out to the Hobbits as they dismounted.  “There is a road that avoids these stairs, but Moria is no place for large beasts, even when they are only as large as ponies.  The paths are steep and slick, and there is no wind or sky or grass.  It would be a cruelty to bring them into the depth of the mountain.”

“Where will they go?” Belle asked, much alarmed for Old Jem, as he was not only quite dear to her but was borrowed to boot.

Gandalf was already pulling off his horse’s bridle.  “Thrush knows the way back down to the grasslands; he’s traveled this road before.  He will keep the others safe until our return, whenever that may be.”

Isumbras raised his eyebrows at Belle as they shouldered their packs and patted their ponies farewell, but he did not ask what the wizard meant.

“Be safe, Jem,” Belle whispered.  “I’ll come back for you.  I promise.”

They followed the Dwarves up the stair and around the bend to discover a wide, arched doorway in the living stone of the mountain.  On either side stood ancient holly trees.  You will recall what difficulty this entrance caused on another occasion many years later, but tonight the travelers passed it easily, for in those days, the Dwarves kept it open, guarded only by half a dozen stout sentries.

Frar and Frag said a few words to the sentries left on duty and then led their visitors into an antechamber whose ceiling was so high that the light of their torches did not reach it.  Here they were relieved of their packs by a pair of attendants (Belle kept the bag with the wargs in it, of course), and then they continued into a passageway that was narrow but expertly constructed.  This passageway snaked up and then down, and they passed doors and archways on either side that opened onto yet further passageways.  Hobbits are hole-dwellers, as you know, and do not easily lose their sense of direction underground, but Belladonna thought she would never come out of this vast maze if once she lost the light of the torches in front of her.

Finally, an archway larger than the others opened in front of them, spilling orange firelight onto their feet.  Inside they could hear a cacophony of voices and clinking metal.  Were they coming to a forge? Belle wondered.  She knew, of course, that Dwarves were famous even among the Elves for their metalwork.

But when she passed under the archway, she saw immediately that this was no forge: it was a great hall, lit with a roaring fire down the length of the room.  All around the fire were trestle tables, and all around the trestle tables were Dwarves, eating, drinking, clinking their cups, and shouting to be heard over the noise.

“Ah,” said Gandalf, “supper.”

But of course the guests could not be suffered to sit at the bottom of the room and eat the common fare of the Moria Dwarves (though even the common fare was very good).  They must first be led up the length of the room, silencing those they passed by the strangeness of their shapes and their garments, until they came to the ornate stone-and-metal throne on the dais.

On this throne sat a doughty-looking Dwarf wearing a heavy red cloak and a number of even heavier gold chains.  His hair and beard were deep red, streaked with the white of age, or grief.  His beard was gathered into a gold ring just under his chin—and indeed the chin itself was quite bare—but his long hair hung loose down his back and over the cloak.  The Dwarf turned his keen, bright eyes upon the visitors, observing them in silence from under his eyebrows.  Finally, he put his goblet down on the arm of the throne.

“Welcome, Gandalf, friend of my house.”

Belladonna almost dropped the saddlebag of wolf pups.  The voice was low and husky, but it was certainly the voice of a woman.  She looked more closely in the wavering firelight: doughty the Dwarf was, but her form was feminine after a fashion, and what Belle had taken for a beard was only swaths of hair bound under her chin.

Her observations were cut short when she realized that she was being observed herself. 

“And thrice welcome,” said the she-Dwarf, “to the sons and daughter of Gerontius Took.”

Hearing the name of her father on the tongue of this strange being, Belle nearly dropped the saddlebag a second time.

“How do you know our father?” Grim asked, stepping forward.

The Dwarf held up a hand.  “There is time for tales later.  You have traveled far and you are tired and hungry.  Sit, rest, and enjoy the table of Dís, granddaughter of Thrór and acting regent of Khazad Dum, which the Elves call Moria.”

 

Belladonna had heard more than once in the Shire that Dwarves did not understand hospitality as Hobbits did, though the Old Took had never said anything of the sort.  For her part, Belle found no cause for complaint in her reception by the Dwarves of Moria: they brought in bowls of steaming water for their guests to wash in, followed by bowls of deep red wine imported from the south.  They feasted on lamb spiced with herbs Belladonna had never tasted and dense, dark bread with honey instead of butter.  Belle slipped samples of both these delicacies under the table to the pups in their bag. 

Gandalf sat by invitation at Dís’s elbow and the Hobbits, though they politely tried to seat themselves farther down the long hall, were escorted to the bench just below the dais, where they sat with Frar and Frag.

These two Dwarves certainly showed no sign of being ignorant of hospitality, and they asked questions of their guests with all proper interest before entertaining them with stories of the feats of their forefather, Durin.  Yet, though the noise in the hall was great and merry, and though there never seemed to be a shortage of Dwarves to carry in the laden trays or bear out the empty ones, Belladonna noticed a feeling of incompleteness in the gathering—the laughter was not as loud as it should have been, and the feasters were not as numerous.

“I thought there were no Dwarf women,” Isumbras said suddenly, through a mouthful of lamb.

“Brassy!” Grim cried.

“No, it’s quite all right,” said Frag (or Frar?).  “We know such rumors abound in Middle Earth.  You’ve heard, I suppose, that Dwarf children just pop out of the ground, no doubt?”  Isumbras looked sheepish.  “What a ridiculous idea,” the Dwarf went on.  “We love our earth and stone, but not that much!  No, master Hobbit, there are she-Dwarves just as there are she-Hobbits, and though they are remembered in few songs in the Common Speech, we have many songs of them in our own.”

“Don’t get him started,” the other Dwarf said in a stage whisper.  “He has a fine singing voice, and if you once set him down that path, there will be no stopping him until you fall of weariness.”

Finally, when a tray of exotic dried figs was making its way around the fire, Dís drew the attention of the company by striking the base of her goblet on the table in front of her.  It was a solemn sound, like the hammering of a judge’s gavel, and the Hobbits fell as silent as the Dwarves.

“Dear kinsmen,” Dís said, “dear friends.  Long have we awaited this meeting, where old victories may be remembered and recent losses—we hope—be redressed.  The Dwarves of Moria know well the tale of my grandfather, but our guests may not, though it belongs partly to them.  I promised you explanations after supper, children of Gerontius Took: now it is time for you to hear all.”

The she-Dwarf opened her hand toward Frar (or Frag?), who rose solemnly, quite a different fellow from the one who had just been laughing with Grim over a joke from the Shire.  He crossed his arms over his chest and, gazing into the fire, sang a song about the Lonely Mountain, and about the dragon that had swept down upon it long ago and scattered the people of its king.  You know this song already, no doubt, and the Hobbits knew the tale it told, though they had thought until now that it was only one of their father’s made-up bedtime stories.  It was significantly less enticing when they heard it as a true history.

“When the dragon came, I was returning from a journey to Dale,” said Dís when the song ended.  “And thus I witnessed ahead of me the destruction of my ancestral home and behind me the ruination of that merry town of Men.  It was by some marvel as yet unexplained my father Thráin and grandfather Thrór won free of Smaug’s fury.  We gathered up the remnant of our people, and a small remnant it was.  Dispossessed of our home, were left to wander the hills and make a meager living as best we could, for the ancient Dwarf fortress in the Misty Mountains, which might have provided a refuge, had long ago been closed by an army of Orcs.  Yes, my friends, these very halls have, within living memory, been infested by creatures that love neither beauty nor craft, unless it is craft by which they can work mischief on those less powerful than they.  Moria was closed to us then, and it remained closed to us until Thrór, my grandfather, dared to broach its gates and challenge Azog the Defiler.  He was slain by an Orc arrow, and in his grief and rage, my father Thráin vowed to mount a war of revenge.  But I was in the south during these days, so here I must cede the tale to Gandalf, for he knows it better than I.”

The Hobbits turned inquiring faces to the wizard, who, sitting as he did on the dais in the dancing firelight, looked suddenly more than the grey pilgrim he had always seemed before.  He turned his goblet absently in his fingers as he spoke.

“I had met Thráin in his youth, before Smaug came to the Lonely Mountain, and when word reached me that he had gone to Moria, I felt obliged to lend him what aid I could.  Ridding these mines of the Orcs was a worthy end, in any case.  I happened to be passing through the Shire when the news reached me, and by that time the war had been raging for nearly six years.  So with no time to spare, I imposed upon a promising young Hobbit for companionship on the road.  That is why Gerontius Took was by Thráin’s side on the day he and his cousin Dain finally stormed the gates, killed the Defiler, and reclaimed the ancient stronghold of the Dwarves.  There is a fine song about it, though the Old Took doesn’t feature in it as much as he should.  However, it hasn’t yet been translated out of the Dwarvish into the Common Tongue, so we shall have to leave the account at that for now.”

Grim, Brassy, and Belladonna exchanged open-mouthed stares.  But before they could beg Gandalf to tell them more, Dís had gone on.

“That was more than forty years ago,” she said.  “The alliance of Dwarves lasted for another several years, as they cleared these halls of the ruin that the Orcs had made.  But it was dangerous work, for they often had to flush hidden camps of Orcs, and it was sad, for everywhere they saw the evidence of kin they had lost, of beautiful things that had been spoiled.  In the end, my nephew Dain could not bear to dwell here, and he returned to the Iron Hills.  Thráin and my brother Thorin also felt the desire to dwell somewhere less tainted with bitter memories, and they went west to the Ered Luin.  In that time I had returned from my long journeys, and they left me here as regent on behalf of my father.”

Belladonna looked around the hall at the bearded faces, so grave where they had just lately been laughing.  Now she understood the hollowness she had sensed during the feast.

“But Dwarves are hardy folk,” Dís declared, “and these halls have been hard-won by our blood and our tears.  I will not be moved by ghosts: our people will continue in Moria and regain the glory of our forefathers, even if it takes a hundred lifetimes.”

“Admirably spoken,” Gandalf put in when Dís fell silent, “but this is not the quest that concerns us just now.  Tell the young Tooks what they are here for.”

Dís fixed her dark, piercing eyes on them.  “When you leave here, you will be escorted to our gates by a party of travelers who are going to seek support from our scattered kinsmen.  Some go to seek Thorin in the west; some go to seek Dain in the Iron Hills.  But you go to seek Thráin in Erebor—the Lonely Mountain.”

Brassy gave something of a squawk at this pronouncement, though he had always been the most eager to hear again the tale of Smaug the fire-drake.  Gandalf held up a hand to silence him while Dís explained.

“Nine years ago, if our information is good, Thráin set out alone on a quest to revisit Lonely Mountain.  Thorin tried to dissuade him, but my father was possessed by a desire to see again the halls of his sires, and to discover if any way might be found to dislodge the dragon and retake the kingdom.  Whether it was madness that drove him or the knowledge of a secret weakness in the mountain’s defenses, we do not know.  All we know is that Thráin, rightful King Under the Mountain, left the Ered Luin long years ago and wandered eastward.  He did not pass through Moria, though we heard rumors that he had crossed the Redhorn Gate under Caradhras.  The last word we received was from a raven of Mirkwood, who saw my father enter the trees by the forest road.  That was five years ago.  Nothing more have we ever heard of him.”

“That is our task, my young Hobbits,” Gandalf said, rising.  “We go to seek someone who is lost, and who has deserved better than to suffer what he and his kinfolk have suffered.”

“I have an obligation to my people,” Dís added, “or I would seek him myself.  But I will not repeat the folly of my forefathers in taking on a task that is too great for me, leaving my kinsfolk without a guide in this hard world.”  She, too, rose.  “Bring my father back to me, children of Gerontius Took, or if you cannot, bring me back word of his honorable death, and you will forever have the gratitude and the friendship of Dwarves.”

The Hobbit lads just stared at her, at a loss for words, but when they said nothing Belladonna rose from the bench and said, “We will find him, Dís granddaughter of Thrór, or we will die trying.  I pledge my word as a Took.”

Dís’s sad face crinkled in a smile.  “And that is good enough for any Dwarf.”

The Hobbits watched the she-Dwarf descend heavily from her throne and disappear through the dark archway.  Slowly the other Dwarves followed her, and finally only Frar and Frag were left to show the strangers to their guest chambers.

 

These chambers were a spacious room not far from the hall, and a fire had been lit in anticipation of their arrival.  The lower chambers, they were told, were heated by the earth itself, but this high in the mountains, the stone rooms could be as chill in summer as they were in winter.  Once they were left alone, the travelers readied themselves for bed in silence, meditating on what they had heard.  Even Lily and Foxglove were subdued, curling up to sleep on the hearth with a minimum of puppyish rough-housing.

“Well,” said Grim at last, when they were climbing into bed (though the comfort of sleeping on something other than the ground was a little lost on them in the wake of more pressing concerns), “it’s not the sort of quest I was expecting, Gandalf, but I can’t say you weren’t accurate in your description of it.  But I thought at least there’d be a princess involved.”

“Dís is a princess,” Brassy pointed out.

“You know what I mean,” Grim said, and soon after that, both the Hobbit lads were snoring into their pillows.

But Belle was not ready to let the matter rest.  “Why are we really here, Gandalf?” she whispered into the growing dark.  The fire was dying even as she spoke.

“What part of all that’s just passed did you not understand?” he asked gruffly.

“It’s not what was said that I need to know about,” she replied.  “I need to know what wasn’t said.  You wouldn’t have brought three of us with you if you thought that you could do this on your own, so let’s assume you know this is going to be dangerous.”  He did not contradict her.  “So, knowing it’s going to be dangerous, why would you risk your own life and the lives of three Hobbits for the life of one Dwarf—and a mad one, at that?”

“You’re a sharp creature,” Gandalf said.  He was silent for a time, and Belle was about to press him again when he explained.  “There are some things worse than death, Belladonna Took, and I would risk the death of any number of us to save one from such a fate as might await Thráin where he was going.”

“You don’t think he’s at the Lonely Mountain, then.”  Death awaited him there, surely, but only death.

“I hope he is,” Gandalf said.  “It is there, surely, that we must begin the search for him.  But you are right: I’m afraid he is not in Erebor.”

“Where do you think he is, then?” she asked, not sure she wanted him to answer.

But he did not answer anyway.  He only said, “Thráin’s story is only a small part of a larger story, one so old and so long that even I know only a part of it.  If it’s not enough to risk your life to save him from torment, risk your life to be a part of the story.  Even the wise cannot see all ends.”

She heard him turn over and knew that was the end of the conversation, such as it was.  So she, too, turned over and buried her head in the warm, dwarvish blankets, glad she had made the decision to come before she had been given all the facts, for if she had known then what she knew now, surely she would have stayed at home.  She wondered if that had not been the wizard’s plan all along.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We come to a parting of the ways--and meet someone who is not yet what he will be....

They spent four days with the Dwarves, all told.  The first two days they simply rested and reprovisioned, adjusting their gear in the knowledge that they no longer had four stout ponies to carry it for them.  Belle was very cautious about keeping Lily and Foxglove out of sight in their bedchamber, though they were becoming rather boisterous and hard to quiet.  In fact, she could see that they had grown significantly even in the short time she had been their caretaker, and they were starting to choose meat over cheese.  Wargs, she decided, grew faster than their smaller cousins.  A lot faster.

“I’m not going to be able to carry them both,” she said to Isumbras on the second evening.  The Hobbits were waiting in the chamber while Gandalf sat in council with Dís in the hall.  They were to depart the next day.

“Don’t look at him,” Grim said from the other side of the room, where he was checking his gear one last time.  “He’s all flab.  I’ll carry one of them.”  Belle had perhaps never loved her brother quite as much as she did just then.

 

And so, on the morning of the third day, they shouldered their packs and followed Frar and Frag out of the chamber and into the torch-lit passageways that led deep into the mountain and came out on the other side.  Belle was surprised to find quite a troop of Dwarves waiting to see them off at the first guard-room.  Among them was Dís.

“Frar and Frag will lead our travel parties,” she explained, “and your roads lie together until you reach the Drimrill Dale, below the eastern gates of Moria.  Dwarves travel tirelessly on foot, but they shall try to remember that our Hobbit friends may perhaps be less used to the march.  Still,” she added as if in afterthought, “you will travel faster if all who have legs can use them.  May I suggest that you let the young wargs walk?”

Belle felt herself blushing under the she-Dwarf’s knowing gaze, and Dís made it worse by adding, “The next time you wish to hide a pair of wolf pups, don’t leave them locked up in a room next to the bedchamber of the one from whom you are trying to hide them.  They howled all yesterday afternoon.”  Belle squirmed and stammered, but Dís’s face crinkled again in a smile.  “They seem very attached to you, and for that reason I do not resent the attempted smuggling.  But know that these will be the first wargs to walk the paths of Khazad Dum and live to see the sun again.”

Belle and Grim sheepishly opened their saddlebags under the eyes of all the assembled Dwarf company, and there were muffled cries of astonishment when the two grey forms—less infant fluff now than gangly teenage limbs—tumbled from them and blinked in the torchlight. 

“They’re well behaved,” Belle said.  “Look, they come when they’re called.  Lily!  Foxglove!  To me.”

The pups shook themselves and trotted lazily toward her.  Lily sat on Belle’s feet and Foxglove sat on Lily.  She chewed his ear, growling playfully.

Belle let out a breath.  In all truthfulness, when she called them it was hit or miss whether they would even look up, but the Tooks had a fair bit of luck in them, and it served her well that day.

So the company set off, a troop of Dwarves in search of new travels and a troop of travelers in search of an old Dwarf.  It took them two full days of steady marching to reach the lower halls where the sun peeped through slits high up in the stone walls.  At every turn and every stair in those two dark days, Belladonna was glad to have the Dwarves with her, with their infallible sense of direction—and their torches.  Nowhere in the levels below the door by which they had entered Moria did they see any sign of habitation: the feast in the upper chambers had indeed been nothing more than a hasty mess in a campsite, by Dwarf standards, and Belladonna could see that it pained them not to be able to offer their guests something better.

“We’ll sleep tonight in the great hall on this level,” Frar-or-Frag announced when the group reached the bottom of yet another stair.  “Tomorrow, we part company: we Dwarves turn aside to reach the main gates and Gandalf’s company will cross the bridge of guard and leave by a side gate into Dimrill Dale.  You’ll be safer that way,” he explained to Brassy and Grim, who were standing at his elbow.  “Less likely to be seen by unfriendly eyes.”

On this, their last night with the Dwarves, the Hobbits made what return they could for the wealth of lore and legend that the mountain-people had shared with them on the way.  They sang songs and told stories of the Shire, like the tale of how the Great Bull-Roarer Took had invented the game of golf, which I will not repeat here as you know it already.  The Dwarves laughed and clapped their hands and pleased Isumbras mightily by asking him to repeat one of the Old Took’s songs so that they might sing it themselves in after-years.

But in the end even the night-songs had to come to a close, and on their last night in the halls of Khazad Dum, the Dwarf troop lay like pilgrims on the floor of the great chamber, in the company of three Hobbits, two warg pups, and one old, grey wizard.

The next morning, they took leave of one another, and Belladonna renewed her pledge to find Dís’s missing father.  The Dwarves turned north to make their final exit from Moria through its mighty iron gates, and the Hobbits followed Gandalf down another wide stair into the lowest habitable level of the fortress.  All that lay below them was the mines.

Dim sunlight from the air shafts greeted them as they entered an ante-chamber that Belladonna would have taken for another great hall, except that in the middle of it was a gaping chasm where the floor should have been.  Over this chasm there sprang a narrow bridge, with no railing and no space even for two to walk abreast.

“The Bridge of Khazad Dum: the first defense of Moria,” Gandalf explained when Grim quailed at the sight of it.  “Enemies must cross it one at a time or not at all, and a single Dwarf on this side, armed with enough arrows, can hold the chamber against a whole army.”  This did not seem to encourage Grim to step out onto it.  Hobbits, as you know, are ground-dwelling creatures, and they do not love heights.

In the end, it was the warg pups who crossed the bridge first, padding over it with the same clacking sound of nails as a terrier makes trotting across a flagstone paving.  It was a comforting, homely sound, and it emboldened the three Hobbits to shuffle out over the abyss, moving with as much speed as care allowed, and not looking down.

Belladonna was the last across, not because she was more afraid than her brothers—though it would be untrue to say that she was not afraid at all—but because she was waiting for Gandalf.  The wizard crossed the bridge slowly, almost thoughtfully, and toward the end he turned back and looked long over the side, leaning on his staff, his expression inscrutable.  But finally he shook his head and joined the Hobbits. 

Belle gave him a keen look, but he pretended not to notice, and in a few moments, he was cheerful again, leading the way down the passage and out—at last—into the sunlight.

“Behold,” said the wizard, “Dimrill Dale, where Durin first looked into the Mirrowmere and in daylight saw the stars reflected on its waters.”

They could not behold right away.  After being so long in darkness, even the wolves blinked at the brilliance of the sun and stood quite blind until their eyes had adjusted.  When she could finally see again, Belladonna drank in the green and the blue of the valley as a parched Man drinks clear water.  The breeze was cool even in late June, but she breathed it in, grateful for its freshness after spending so many days underground. 

Lily and Foxglove were breathing it in, too, their noses quivering with the new scents of the east.  Suddenly, their hackles went up and they growled deep in their throats.  It was a chilling sound from creatures Belle had grown to love and trust, and for an instant, she could only feel the fear of their menace, and she had no thought for what might have frightened them.

But then there was a sound even more chilling than the growling of wargs: an inarticulate shout went up from the trees to their left and a dozen hunched figures leapt from the shadows and plunged toward them.

“Back, back!” Gandalf shouted to the Hobbits, drawing his sword.

The Hobbits were so startled that they did as he bid them, falling behind his towering figure without even thinking to draw their own weapons.

The first creature that reached Gandalf was armed with a spiked club, but he never had the opportunity to use it.  Gandalf felled him with a stroke of his sword, and then threw back two others with a sweeping blow of his staff.

Suddenly, one of the creatures in the back of the group gave a howl of pain and collapsed.  His neighbor had scarcely the time to turn his head toward his fallen compatriot before he, too, went down with a cry.  Arrows stood out of their backs.

The remaining half-dozen attackers turned and fled back into the deep shadows of the woods, leaving their dead behind.

“What were those?” Isumbras asked, only now working his dagger out of its sheath.

Gandalf looked at the grey, fallen bodies.  “Those,” he said, “were Orcs.  Moria is being watched, and we have been espied.”

“But who shot these two?” Grim asked, pointing at the two nearest the trees.  He did not get close enough to touch them even with his feet, for they smelled foul and their blood was black on the grass.

“It was the Dwarves!” said Belladonna, who had been quicker than her brothers to seek the source of the arrows.  Shielding her eyes against the sun, she pointed with her other hand back up the mountain and off to the north, where the troop they had traveled with now stood at the foot of a great iron gate.  Frag still had a bow in his hand—or perhaps it was Frar.

Gandalf, following Belladonna’s gaze, waved his thanks to the Dwarves on the hillside.  “There now,” he said as the travelers gathered themselves to set off once more.  “Aid comes from unexpected places, and fate smiles on our path.  Come, my Hobbits.  The adventure has begun.”

The wizard led his companions down from the slopes and into the foothills of the Misty Mountains.  There they picked up the line of the Celebrant and began to follow the river south.  The going was slower now, even though they traveled mostly downhill, because of course they no longer had the aid of their ponies.  It was well enough that the warg pups were sufficiently strong to trot along under their own power, for carrying them like two pieces of hairy, squirming luggage would have been a burden indeed.

They had only been on their way for a day and a half when another unexpected event waylaid them: they were just picking their way across the Celebrant at a rocky ford when Belladonna, looking up to see how far she had still to wade, caught sight of two riders on the ridge ahead.

“Gandalf!” she whispered loudly over the chatter of the stream, “look there!”  She pointed with one hand; the other was already fishing for a river stone to fit into her sling.

The wizard peered fiercely out from under his broad-brimmed hat.  “Hold your fire,” he said to the Hobbit lass.  “I know them.”

The group doubled their pace and splashed up the eastern bank; by then, the two riders had come down from the ridge to meet them.

“What news, Mithrandir?” asked a young Man in stained hunting clothes.  His horse scented the wolves, who were trotting fearlessly up to investigate the newcomers, and shied backward, rolling his great brown eyes.  Belle lunged forward and grabbed the pups by the scruff of the neck.

Gandalf answered to the strange name.  “You undoubtedly bring more tidings of the world than I do today, Arathorn, for I have been long under the mountains in Moria and have heard nothing in more than a week.  Greetings, Saruman,” he added to the other rider, who looked very kingly with his white robe and dapple-grey palfrey. 

The wizard returned the greeting with a dignified bow.  Then he turned his hawklike gaze upon the Hobbits.  “And who have we here?” he asked.  “Halflings?”

Grim stepped forward and bowed awkwardly (for Hobbits politeness tends more toward offering second helpings of pudding than to making obeisance).  “I am Isengrim Took, and this is my brother, Isumbras, and my sister Belladonna.”

“And these are Lily and Foxglove,” Belle added for good measure, still working to hold the pups back from an impertinent nosing of the strangers.

The riders nodded politely, but immediately turned their attention back to Gandalf.

“It is well that we’ve found you, Mithrandir,” Arathorn said, “though we were not seeking you.  Fortune must be riding with me, for I was not seeking Saruman either, and yet I found him, quite without looking for him, in the Gladden Fields as I came south.”

“What were you doing in the Gladden Fields, Saruman?” Gandalf asked, looking keenly at the other wizard from under his great eyebrows.

Saruman ignored the question, saying, “Arathorn’s news concerns my part of the world, and so I have come back with him.  Tell him what you told me, Ranger.”

“What’s a ranger?” Brassy interrupted.

“Why, I am a ranger,” Arathorn answered, without any hint of annoyance.  “A wanderer, a watcher, a sword at the ready.  Not unlike your traveling companion”—nodding to Gandalf— “though far humbler.”  He drew his sword, and the Hobbits were quite amazed to see it broken off near the hilt.  “Don’t worry, I do have a spare.  Well, is that enough for you, Master Halfling?”

“It’ll do for now,” said Brassy.

Arathorn sheathed his broken sword and continued his story.  “I crossed the Anduin up at the Carrock a week ago and made so free as to visit Bjorn’s homestead.”  Isumbras started to interrupt again, but Grim hit him in the shoulder.  “While I was there, he told me that word had reached him of an Orc attack in Rohan.”

“Have the Orcs grown so bold?” Gandalf asked.

“So bold,” Arathorn affirmed, “that this was neither the first nor, I fear, the last attack on the realms of Men.  They made off with a dozen horses and killed almost that many of the Men who tried to defend them.”

“What need do Orcs have of horses?” Gandalf murmured.  “They do not ride, and there’s easier prey if they’re hungry.”

“We do not know, but the Rohirrim have doubled their guard on the Marches, and yet they fear that their small numbers will not be enough to defend the fields if the Orcs attack again.”

“Which they surely will,” Saruman put in, “having found such early success.  If the Orcs are attacking Rohan, they may soon turn their eyes upon Isengard and the stores of Orthanc.  This is why I ride back with Arathorn before I had planned to.”

The Hobbits looked to Gandalf, who was stroking his wiry beard in contemplation.  “This is indeed cause for concern,” he said.  “There are dark days ahead for Rohan.  They may be in need.  If I were not already on an errand…”

Brassy jumped forward.  “Let us go with them to Rohan.  We didn’t make any pledge to Dís.  Let us go and aid Rohan.”

Arathorn smiled and Saruman laughed outright, but Gandalf only looked down at the Hobbit lad with a serious, thoughtful expression.  “It will be dangerous,” he said.

“You promised us an adventure,” Grim said, stepping forward to stand with his younger brother.  “A good, honest battle is more to our taste than this game of hide and seek looking for a madman.  We are armed.”  He drew his father’s dagger and showed it to the Men on horseback.

“And do you know how to use it?” Arathorn asked, still smiling.  It was not a smile of derision, Belle thought: more like the smile one gives a precocious child.

In response, Grim darted forward with surprising speed and flicked his blade under the belly of Arathorn’s horse.  The animal jerked up its head in alarm, and the ranger’s pack tipped sideways and fell to the ground.  Grim had sliced its stays.

The ranger gave Gandalf a look and got down off his horse to retrieve his baggage.  “You’re lucky the stays were long and I can retie them, little cutpurse, or I’d have you carrying my pack all the way from here to Rohan.”

“We can come then?” Brassy asked with cheery disregard for the ranger’s irritation.

“Well, if Mithrandir has promised an adventure,” Arathorn said, “who am I to deny you?”

Gandalf made no objection to that, but Belladonna could see the conflict in his face.  She let the pups go, for they were calmer now, and stood up.  “You should go with them, Gandalf,” she said.  “I can tell you want to.”

“But what about Thráin?” the wizard asked.

“I’ll go on looking for him,” she said.  “I’m the only one who made a pledge to Dís, after all, and I will fulfill it, as best I can.”

Gandalf smiled fondly.  “Hobbits really are amazing creatures.  I will do as you suggest, Belladonna Took.  But I won’t leave you entirely.  I will send you on to Lothlórien, and there you may rest and wait for me.  I go only to see what is to be seen, not to fight the Rohirrim’s war for them, and I will return before the first autumn moon.”

“What’s Lothlórien?” Belle asked, for her father’s stories did not extend east of the Dimrill Dale.

“It is the wood of the southern Elves,” Saruman said, “ruled by Lady Galadriel and Celeborn her spouse.  And it lies on my road back toward the Anduin.”

“And Orthanc?” Gandalf asked pointedly.

“I trust you to judge the situation,” the wizard replied.  “If it is dire, send word and I shall return to defend my own.  But I wish to speak with the lord and lady of the wood, and would have done so before now if I had not been drawn aside from my path.  I will guide you, Halfling; it’s not far.”

So it was that Belladonna took leave of her brothers and traded one wizard for another.  Saruman lent his horse to Gandalf, who put Brassy before him, and Grim sat in front of Arathorn.  “And on the way, Master Took,” the ranger said as they departed, “I shall teach you to do more with that dagger than cut purse-strings.  We shall make warriors of you both ere long.”

“Remember,” Gandalf called over his shoulder, “wait for me in Lórien.  Look for my coming with the last moon of summer.”

And then they were gone, and Belladonna was left with two warg pups and Saruman the White.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's a Hobbit lass to do when left quite alone among strangers? Perhaps make some new friends?

“Lórien is not far,” said Saruman when they lost sight of the riding party.  “Come along.”  And he strode off eastward.

Belladonna shouldered her pack, wondering where the wizard’s luggage was, for he only had a small satchel slung over his shoulder.  Whistling to Lily and Foxglove, who seemed half inclined to follow Gandalf instead, she trotted after her new guide.

At first she tried to engage Saruman in the sort of small talk she used with her previous companions, but she soon discovered that Saruman could not be interested by amusing stories of the Shire, and he studiously ignored the pups scampering about his feet.  When a joke that had been a favorite in the East Farthing for two generations fell quite dead at the wizard’s feet, Belle began to fear that they would walk the rest of the way in an uncomfortable silence.  Then the pups abruptly decided that chasing the tail of Saruman’s robe was by far the best game they could imagine, and Belle was hard put to keep them from tearing the fine fabric clean off the wizard’s back.

“Foxglove, no!” she scolded, prying his jaws open to release the hem.  “Lily, sit!”

Saruman, who had withstood the affront to his dignity with rather admirable calm, said, “You call it Foxglove?”

“Yes,” she gasped, hauling the beasts away from temptation with handfuls of scruff in her fists.  “And this one’s Lily.”  She did not feel he would appreciate being reminded that she had already introduced them.

“How appropriate,” he said.  “Foxglove is a noxious plant.”

“It’s got pretty flowers,” Belladonna pointed out.  “And anyway, I’m named for a noxious plant myself.”

“Nightshade,” the wizard mused, stroking his beard, which was straight and smooth where Gandalf’s was wild.  “Two of a kind, you are.”

“Three,” she corrected him, stroking the ears of the neglected Lily.

“Do you like plant lore?” Saruman asked.

“Oh, yes, after a fashion.  We Shire folk love all growing things, and not king or queen has a finer garden than my Old Took in the springtime.  Though now that we’re east of the Misty Mountains, I can’t say as I recognize half these things growing by the way.”

“That,” said Saruman, pointing to a plant with leaves as round as lily pads, “is mallow.”

“I knew _that_ ,” Belle said.  “And I know that’s wood sorrel, and that’s kingsfoil.”

“Do you know what kingsfoil is good for?”

“Nothing.  It’s a weed we pull up by handfuls in the spring.”

“Ah, the lore of the west hasn’t reached you, then.”  Saruman seemed rather pleased at having found a gap in her knowledge, and he hastened to fill it, speaking at length on the healing powers of this persistent invader of gardens.

Belle was fond of wild things—even fonder than she was of gardens—and it pleased her almost as much to hear their worth validated as it pleased Saruman to teach her about them.  He was, perhaps, a trifle patronizing, but so was Gandalf at times, and Belladonna was relieved to find that she could get on just fine with the white wizard after all.  She just had to keep the wargs from eating his clothing.

They walked along the Celebrant until it was joined by the Nimrodel, which Saruman told her was the twin of the Glanduin on the other side of the mountains, flowing from the same springs deep inside Moria.  Just where the two rivers flowed together, there arose ahead of them a wall of tall, swaying trees laden with bright gold flowers.

“Lothlórien,” Saruman said.

“I’ve never seen trees like that before!  What are they?”

“Mallorn trees, and you are fortunate to see them in these last weeks of summer, because when autumn comes, the flowers fall.  But the leaves turn gold and cling to the branches until spring comes again to replace them.  It’s called the Golden Wood for a reason.”

They passed reverently under the boughs of the vanguard and walked in silence through the mottled green-and-gold sunlight under the trees.

“Where is the court of the lord and lady?” Belle asked at length.  It was growing toward evening, and she was now almost as much tired and hungry as she was awed.

“Who goes there?” asked a clear, bright voice.  It was a question of surprise, not of challenge.

“Saruman the White and his companion.”

“Companions,” Belle said under her breath.

Saruman perhaps did not hear her.  “We seek an audience with Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn.”

“Then audience you shall have.”  A tall, fair-haired youth in a silver tunic stepped out from behind the trees.  “Welcome, Saruman, friend of Lórien.  And who are your companions?”

“Belladonna Took, daughter of Gerontius Took,” the wizard said.

“And Lily and Foxglove,” Belle added, indicating the wargs, who were uncharacteristically quiet, sitting on her feet and observing the stranger with a childlike solemnity.

The Elf bowed to Belle, but his eyes rested warily on the wolf pups.  “Never has a warg crossed our borders,” he said.

“They’re quite tame,” Belle replied.  “Watch.  Lily, Foxglove, sit.”  It was a bit of a cheat, as they were already sitting, but at least neither of them chose that moment to get up and wander off.  Lily even wagged her tail at the sound of her name.

To her surprise, the Elf laughed.  “If the daughter of Gerontius Took, whose fame has come in rumor even to our very doors, will vouch for her friends, the Elves of Lórien will not refuse their company.  Allow me to escort you.  My name is Haldir.”

Those familiar with the events of later years will notice how lax was the guard around the elfwood in these days, but in the time before the coming of the shadow, there was still more joy than caution in the merry people of the woods.

He led them on along the river, deep into the forest where evening was farther advanced and the golden flowers were turning orange in the light of the setting sun.  It was a long walk, and Belle was hungrier than ever when, in the blue glow of twilight, Haldir led them through the gap in a circular wall and they beheld Caras Galadhon, the city of the Elves.

“You live _in_ the trees?” Belle gaped, staring open-mouthed at the platforms suspended at various levels around the massive trunks of the mallorns.  As she watched, two Elves ran lightly along a narrow rope bridge strung up between two flets, the ground at least six fathoms below them.  She turned a little giddy at the thought.

Haldir laughed again.  “It is just as horrifying to us that Hobbits live in holes in the ground!  Never fear; we do know how to host a ground-dwelling guest.  But you must first meet the lord and lady, and for that, you have to climb.”

Saruman followed the Elf to the foot of the largest mallorn tree, where a slender stair spiraled up to a flet four or five times higher than the height of the wizard himself.  Relieved not to be asked to make the climb by rope, Belle followed after him, but the wolves, intimidated by the sight of the woods and sky between the treads of each step, quailed, whimpered, and finally sat down in mute protest.

Belle hesitated, then let Saruman and Haldir disappear around the bend while she returned to the ground.  “Come now,” she said in a cheerful, encouraging voice, “you mustn’t be rude.  When someone invites you in, you must go in.  Or up, as the case may be.”

The wargs eyed her sullenly, and she sighed.  “Look, dear ones.  I don’t want to go up any more than you do.  But when in Bree, do as the Breelanders do.  That’s what my father always told me.  Won’t you come?”

Their looks plainly told her no.  She hesitated again, chewing on a ragged fingernail.  Finally she made her decision.  “All right, you’re a little big for this now, but just this once.”  She dropped her pack onto the ground, put one arm around the ribcage of each animal, and hoisted them up on her hips.  “I can hardly leave you behind now, can I?”

The going was slow, for she was not used to stairs, much less to carrying heavy creatures up them, and she had to stop several times to catch her breath.  But the pups did not struggle, and she felt more equal to the task knowing that they trusted her.

When she finally stumbled through the open trapdoor and onto the flet, she was surprised to find that it looked much more like a habitation than a campsite.  The boards of the flet were smooth and silver with age; there were chairs with green cushions and candles casting a friendly, quiet glow over the whole scene.  On two chairs in the middle of the open space—fine chairs, but not really thrones, Belle thought—sat a young Elf and Elf-maiden.  They were clad as Haldir was, though they wore thin circlets of white silver on their brows, and Belle thought she had never seen anything so fair as the two of them, sitting side by side.  Saruman and Haldir stood before them, evidently having completed their first greetings, and all eyes turned toward her.

She dumped the pups hurriedly onto the floor to make a little curtsy.  “My lord, my lady.”  Then she could think of nothing else to say.

The Lady Galadriel rose, and she was much taller than Belle would have guessed, and when she spoke, her voice was deeper, more melodious, than most female voices.  “Welcome, Belladonna Took, who bears introduction by not one but two wizards.”

She held Belle’s gaze for a moment, and the Hobbit lass was not sure whether she was expected to meet it or look away.  Without really making a decision, she returned the gaze in honest, frank Hobbit fashion, and was rewarded with a long look into a face that few save the high Elves had ever looked upon.  The lady was not young after all, Belle thought.  Her eyes were at once clear and deep, like an ancient, untainted pool.  What had those eyes seen? she wondered.

Lily and Foxglove had, by this time, finished investigating the room by sense of smell and made their way boldly up to the lady’s feet.  Celeborn stood hastily, but Galadriel raised her hand to prevent him from interfering.  She bent down and took the pups’ muzzles gently in her hands, looking into their eyes searchingly.  Their tails hung forgotten for a moment, then began to wag cheerfully, and the lady smiled.

“Welcome, Lily and Foxglove,” she said, “first emissaries of your race.”  Belle wondered whether Haldir had told her their names, or whether, somehow, they had introduced themselves.

“We will speak of your errand tomorrow,” Celeborn said.  “But the hour is growing late, and you are hungry and tired.  Refresh yourselves with food and sleep, and in the morning we can begin our business.”

That night they feasted on elvish fare and drank sweet white wine from the south.  Saruman was brought to sleep on a flet in a nearby tree, Elf-style, but Belladonna felt it would be an unkindness to carry Lily and Foxglove down those spindly stairs only to cart them back up different ones a moment later.  So she and the wolves were lodged in a little grotto under a grove of mallorn trees, and though Haldir, who showed her to it, apologized several times for the humbleness of the accommodations, Belle could not have been happier.  For the first time since she had left home, she was in something like a Hobbit hole, and what it lacked the airy brightness of an Elf flet, it made up for in sensible, solid comfort.

 

The “business” that Celeborn had mentioned occupied him, Saruman, and Lady Galadriel the whole of the next morning, and Belladonna was left to wander Calas Galadhon with her four-footed companions.  She felt shy and out of place among these ageless Elves, but they must have received word of her from the Lady, for none hindered her passing or questioned her about the wolves—though she caught more than one fair eye trained on them with either bemusement, or mistrust.

When the hour for the midday meal had arrived—and none too soon, Belle thought, though she had enjoyed a hearty breakfast—she discovered that Haldir was away on an errand, Saruman and the Lord and Lady were still closeted in whatever matter the great ones of Middle Earth had need of discussing, and she was without a lunching companion.  A beautiful, golden-haired youth (if youth indeed he was) gave her a plate of fragrant food and a cup of white wine, but he did not offer to sit with her.  Indeed, she thought perhaps he was the cook.  So she wandered away toward her grotto, trying not to look as out of place as she felt, and finally sat down on a mossy bank with her back to the great flet.

“It is a poor meal that is not shared with a fellow,” came a voice from behind her.

She turned to see another beautiful Elf, this one a young woman with dark eyes and dark hair that reflected the sunlight like jet.  Belladonna stared for a long moment before recovering her good manners.  “I’ll happily share it with you,” she said at last, “if you would accept me as a fellow, humble though I may be.”

“I thank you.”  The Elf sat beside her and tucked her bare feet under the hem of her long silver dress.

After another silence, Belle decided it was for the guest to introduce herself first.  “My name is Belladonna Took,” she said.  “I came here with Saruman, and before that, I traveled with Gandalf—though I think you call him Mithrandir.”

“We do,” the Elf replied with a smile.  “My name is Arwen, and for my part, I welcome you to Lothlórien, though I am a guest here myself.”

“Oh?  Where are you from?”

“Elrond is my father, and he lives many days’ journey to the north on the other side of the Misty Mountains, in Rivendell, the Last Homely House.”

Belladonna considered this information solemnly.  “Is it the last homely house going west, or going east?”

“Going east.”

“I’m glad to hear that the Shire is part of what your folk consider homely.  What brings you so far from home?”

“Lady Galadriel is my kinswoman,” the Elf replied, “and I have dwelt here ever since my mother, Celebran, went to the Grey Havens and took ship for the west.  That was long ago, by your reckoning, and I was younger then and needed still the attentions of a mother.”

“Why did Celebran leave you?”

The Elf’s face went sad, like a cloud sliding over the sun, and Belladonna was instantly sorry she had caused a shadow to fall over so bright a thing.  “Orcs…captured her,” she explained.  “My brothers rescued her in one of those great deeds of courage that only those involved will ever remember.  But they were too late: she had been wounded and the wound was poisoned.  She could not remain in Middle Earth and yet live, so she set sail for the west, where her hurts could be healed.”

“When will she come back?”

“No one returns from the west,” Arwen said.  “There they live ever, but they cannot cross the sea a second time to tell us of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Belle said, and she meant it.

Arwen smiled softly.  “It is the fate of my people—to take ship in the end, when we are weary of this world.  To us it is a relief, like shedding a heavy pack.  But for those of us left behind, yes, it is a sorrow.”

Belle sipped thoughtfully on her wine.  “Will you go to the west too, then?”

To her surprise, Arwen’s brow furrowed, as though she were looking into the gloom to discern a shadowy road sign.  “It is the fate of my people,” she repeated, “but we do not all go.  Some of us die here, in war or violence; a few choose to stay.  Which path lies ahead for me my sight cannot foretell.”

“Does anyone who’s not an Elf ever go west?”

Again, Arwen looked abstractedly into the middle distance.  “Perhaps.  It is not forbidden, but any who would sail must be granted passage on a ship from the Havens, and few are they who have the desire—or if they have the desire, then also the courage—to seek the permission of Cirdan the shipwright.”

“And few who’d leave dry land for the sea,” Belle put in, slipping back into proper Hobbit mode.

At this, Arwen laughed, and the sun shone in her face again.  “Now, Belladonna Took, tell me what brings you so far from the kindly land of the Shire.”

Belle hesitated.  Gandalf had not sworn her to secrecy, and yet after the warg attack and then the Orc ambush, she suspected that the fewer people who knew of their mission, the safer they would be.  Yet she was among the Elves, and if she could not trust an Elf, whom could she trust?  So in as vague a manner as possible, she told Arwen that she, her brothers, and Gandalf were searching for a missing friend of the wizard, and he and her brothers had turned aside to the assistance of Rohan, while she was sent ahead to await his return.

“A missing friend?” Arwen echoed thoughtfully.  “I shall not press you further, but I think you should tell all to Lady Galadriel.  She is wise in counsel and great in foresight, and she may perhaps help you in your quest.”

“When I saw her last night,” Belle confessed, “I thought that that’s what Gandalf must have intended when he sent me ahead of him.  What else am I supposed to do here while I wait, if not try to find which way we’re to go after we leave?”

“Then allow me to bring you to her, after you’ve finished your meal.”

“I’m finished now.  But is it really all right?  They’ve been talking with Saruman all morning already.  Surely they’re tired of business.”

Arwen smiled again.  “Surely they are, but business, as you call it, is none the less pressing for their being weary of it.  Saruman is part of the White Council, and he brings tidings from afar that not even the Elves know of.  After a morning weighed down with his concerns, this search will seem a trifle to the Lord and Lady, and they will gladly hear you.  Come.”

Leaving the pups in the grotto on strict orders not to wander off (orders she did not doubt they would disregard as soon as it struck their fancy), Belladonna followed Arwen back up the spindly stair and to the flet where the Lord and Lady held court.  To her surprise, Galadriel met them at the top. 

“Celeborn and Saruman are still deep in conversation,” she said.  “They are both lore masters and Saruman has some particularly pressing questions just now about the work done in the ancient smithies of Celebrimbor.  But I am at my leisure, if you wish to speak with me.”

Arwen bowed her agreement and stood aside to let Galadriel pass.  The golden lady led the way back down the stairs (which was much worse than going up, Belle decided), and then into the trees.  Arwen saw them off but did not follow.  Gradually, the quiet bustle of the Elves going about their business faded into the near-silence of the wood; only occasional bird calls interrupted the whispering of the leaves.  Galadriel seemed to have no set destination, and Belladonna understood that they were going to talk as they walked.  It was not a very Hobbit-like thing to do, talking being most comfortable when the speakers are sharing a pipe, an ale, or a seed cake between them, but she was among the Elves now.

“What do you wish to speak to me about?” the Lady asked.

“About why I’ve come here,” Belladonna began uncertainly.  Galadriel turned her piercing eyes toward her and she squared her shoulders.  “About Thráin, a Dwarf of Lonely Mountain.  Do—do you know him?”

“I have not met the son of Thrór,” Galadriel said, “but I have heard his name in news and in song.  What is your business with a Dwarf of Erebor?”

Belladonna explained, and Galadriel listened without interrupting.  Yet Belle had the sense that she was only ever half listening, that her mind was seeking elsewhere even while her ears were attentive.  A few times Belle paused, unsure if Galadriel was still paying attention, but each time the Lady stopped in her tracks and waited inquiringly until Belle continued.

When the tale was ended, such as the Hobbit lass could recount it, Galadriel walked on in silence for a thoughtful while.  At last she said, “It is good that you have told me of your errand.  Gandalf surely meant to seek here for the trail, for news comes to Lórien from many paths and many mouths.”

“Do you know what’s happened to Thráin, then?” Belle asked.

“No.  But I shall seek news of him from such friends as can be trusted with the inquiry.  And…I shall use what means are available to myself as well, in searching for the way that he has gone.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Belladonna said.  “Can I help?”

Galadriel smiled.  “Not yet, I think.  Your time shall come.”

“It’s just that…well, with Gandalf gone and me waiting for him here for who knows how many weeks, I…I don’t know what do to with myself.”  She blushed, feeling like a guest who arrives on the doorstep uninvited and then complains that no entertainment has been prepared for her.

But Galadriel laughed.  “Do not fear becoming idle in Lórien, mistress Hobbit.  We shall be glad to teach you some of our lore if you like, or our crafts.”

Belle brightened.  “Oh!  I would dearly love to learn the songs of the Elves, my lady.”

“Then learn you shall, if you are a quick study.  I shall ask Arwen, my kinswoman, to tutor you in our language, and if that proves too difficult, she may teach your our songs translated into the common tongue—though they lose something of their beauty in that form.”

“I’ll do my best,” Belle promised, deeply feeling the honor she was being granted, even if it was only a concession because she could be useful in no other way.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On adventures, things never stay quiet for long--even in Lorien.

So for the next month, Belladonna Took, Hobbit lass of the Shire, became the first Hobbit in living memory to learn the speech of the Elves, and she proved herself a quick study under Arwen’s patient tutelage.  Never much of a poet herself (you will recall her sorry effort at a birthday song for her father), she nevertheless found that she could learn and remember the elven songs after only one or two hearings, even if she did not know the meaning of their words.  They spoke to her in ways that made her feel much bigger and much older, as though she had seen all of history and contained the whole world inside her.  This, she thought, was what it must be like to be an Elf.

She saw Galadriel and Celeborn more often than she would have expected, for although they were more solemn than the other merry Elves of the golden wood, yet they loved to walk among their friends, to sing and to work alongside the lowliest of their folk.  From Galadriel, Belle learned something of the art of weaving, though she was not very good at it, and from Celeborn she learned how to climb the elvish stairs without fear, and even to run along the thin ropes that they strung from tree to tree wherever there was no permanent bridge.  This she was much better at than weaving, and in fact she came to like the feeling of wind in her hair and empty space beneath her feet.  But for all that, she did not give up her sensible quarters in the grotto.

Saruman, too, she saw often, for he lingered in Lórien—torn, she thought, between returning to Isengard to see to his own, or heading back north to continue whatever investigations Arathorn had interrupted.  From Saruman she continued to learn herb lore, and she delighted in her increasing knowledge of growing things, as any Hobbit would; her delight never penetrated Saruman enough to entice him to laugh with her, but he sometimes smiled, and Galadriel told her that that meant much.

All the while, Lily and Foxglove continued to grow with the astonishing speed of wild creatures; they were rambunctious and strong, and more than once did they come pelting back to the grotto with an Elf in hot pursuit.  The Elf would be angry or laughing, depending on how much damage the pups had done, but never did they strike them, or even threaten to.  For this, the wargs seemed almost consciously grateful, and aside from digging holes and raiding larders and knocking over furniture in their play, they refrained from doing anything truly unbecoming a guest.  Belladonna slept with Lily at her feet and Foxglove curled with his back against hers, and never did she fear the power of their heavy paws or their gleaming teeth.

 

Then one evening, she wandered with Saruman deep into the green and gold shade of the wood.  He was teaching her about mandrake roots, but they did not grow in Caras Galadhon, and so they passed beyond the walls and picked their way along the banks of the Celebrant in search of them.  Lily and Foxglove rooted about as they walked, busy with searches and games of their own.  Belle was growing tired of walking, for her legs were much shorter than the wizard’s, but she did not wish to be rude, as Saruman was deep into a lecture on medicinal water plants and had been for some time.

Suddenly, the trees opened up before them and they were standing on a green lawn that ran down to a little boat dock where the Celebrant flowed into a much larger river.

“Why, how far we’ve come,” Saruman said.  “This is the Anduin, the great river that flows into the sea away south of here.  Have you seen it before?”

“I haven’t,” Belle replied, “but Arwen has taught me several songs about it.”  She put her hands behind her back, preparing to recite one like a child in school, when there was a hideous shout from the water and up from under the dock surged half a dozen grey-skinned figures.

“Orcs!” she cried, stumbling backward for the cover of the trees.  She had left her sling in the grotto.

Saruman spun on his heel, following her back to the wood.  But the Orcs were swift, and emboldened in the dying light of the sunset, and Belladonna heard their gear clanking as they closed on their prey.  Suddenly, she heard another sound: a snarl and then a yelp, and the clanking paused.  She looked over her shoulder, and saw Lily lifted off the ground, the grey arms of an Orc clamped hard around her chest and one dirty hand locked over her muzzle.

“No!  Put her down!” she screamed pointlessly, but she turned in her flight and sped back down the lawn to try what she might.

There was another yelp, this one in the voice of an Orc, but when Belladonna looked toward its source, the creature had already clamped its bleeding hand over Foxglove’s nose and lifted him by the scruff of the neck with the other.

Belle didn’t know which way to run, but then there was a bright flash of light and the Orc holding Foxglove fell to the earth.  Saruman was flying back across the grass, his staff raised in defiance of the Orcs.  But before he could reach his fallen enemy, another swept in and seized the warg pup, leaping away with astonishing speed.

There was nothing Belle could do but continue her pursuit of the Orc bearing Lily toward the dock, but he was far ahead of her now, and even as she sped down the slope, another Orc came up behind and seized her by the hair.

She cried out in pain, trying to wrench loose the creature’s grimy fingers, but it had a firm grip on her curls and laughed at her efforts.  It began hauling her—not away from the captured Lily, but toward her.  For a split second, Belle did not understand.  Then she saw the tarred raft being pushed out from under the dock: she was being kidnapped.

Scarcely had she grasped the thought when she heard a heavy crack and the Orc at her side stumbled to the ground, dragging her down with him. 

Their two bodies rolled over each other with the force of their fall, their limbs tangled and the Orc’s horrible teeth gnashing inches away from her face.  Then she felt another hand grab her arm—this one aged but strong and clothed in white—and she was pulled free of the confusion.

“To the woods!” Saruman shouted at her, raising his staff to club the Orc again.  “We’ll be safe in the trees.”

“I’m not leaving without Lily and Foxglove!” Belle shouted back at him, gathering herself for another run at the raft.

“It’s too late for them.  Run!”  The wizard swung his staff hard at the Orc as it struggled to rise, but three more had turned back from the dock and were bearing down on the scene of the skirmish.  Again Saruman grabbed Belle’s arm and dragged her, screaming and fighting him, up the lawn and under the shadows of the mallorns.

He stopped only just within the skirt of the forest, but the Orcs skidded to a halt before they came under the golden boughs.  There they remained, taunting and hurling foul language into the gathering dark, but when Saruman stooped for a stone—which surely would have become a formidable weapon in the hands of a wizard—they sneered once more and retreated over the bank of the river.

“They will not pass under the Lady’s trees,” Saruman told the Hobbit lass.  Then it seemed he did not know what else to say.

Belle knelt helpless in the bracken, her curses and excoriations spent.  She did not see which way the raft went once it left the shore because the landscape had melted in the heat of her tears.

The wizard stood behind her, silent for a long moment.  Having released her arm he did not reach out for her again, but his voice was soft as he asked, “Are you hurt?”

“What do they want with them?” she sobbed.

Saruman chose not to answer that question, and she did not press him.  “Come,” he said.  “We must let the Lord and Lady know of this.”

Belle dragged herself to her feet.  She weighed as much as four Hobbits.  Only after they had started back along the banks of the Celebrant did she look over to see how Saruman had weathered the attack.

“You’re bleeding!” she cried.

The wizard raised his arm from where it had been folded against his side, revealing a slick of blood on his white robes.  In the growing dark, it looked almost black.  “The beast that took your Foxglove had a knife in his belt,” he explained.  “And I had no more pine cones to set alight.”

Belle unwound the sash that she had been wearing in place of a belt and reached her arms around the wizard to wrap it around his ribs.  He froze, as though taken aback by her gesture, but as she went on binding his wound, sniffing back her tears so that she could see to work, he let his arms fall and allowed her to tend to him.  Then they made their slow way back to Caras Galadhon.

Their arrival, bloodied, disheveled, and without Belle’s constant companions, caused an uproar among the peaceful folk of the wood.  Haldir was immediately dispatched with a small company to ensure that no more Orcs were hiding on the banks, and to track the raft, if they could catch up with it.  They did not return that night, but when they did come back, they brought no news: the borders were free of spies, but the Anduin’s current was swift and the raft had traveled too far to trace by the time they had arrived.  Belladonna was bathed and given undamaged garments to wear, but she soon shrank back into a corner of the royal flet out of the candlelight to nurse her inner hurts, and in the commotion she was quite forgotten.  Galadriel examined Saruman’s wound and pronounced it to be deep but not poisoned.  She told him that by the early application of the sash to staunch the bleeding he had been saved from greater damage, and by the aid of elvish arts in medicine he would soon be healed.

The wizard did not stay to be doctored, however.  Accepting what salves the Lady offered him, he took his leave the next morning.  “The days are growing darker,” he told Galadriel, as Belladonna looked on, still curled on the chair where she had passed the sleepless night.  “All is not well in these parts, for all the vigilance of the Elves.  I must return to Isengard and prepare for what may come.”

He swept past Belle on his way to the stair, and she thought for a moment that he would walk on without stopping, but in the end he paused and looked at her without speaking.  She raised her eyes to him and all she could think to say was, “Thank you.  For trying.”

He took a long breath, then gave a curt nod and disappeared down the stair.

Those who are familiar with the Red Book know to what ends this wizard eventually came, but it may be instructive to know too that, had she lived to see it, one small person at least would have wept for the fall of Saruman the White.

 

Belle continued to sit forlorn and forgotten as Elves came and went, clearing the bloodied bandages and torn clothing and at last bringing refreshment for Galadriel and Celeborn, who sat in their high seats and held silent counsel together.  At last, Celeborn rose and left the flet, and Galadriel looked at Belle.

“How is it with you, dear guest?” she asked, and Belle felt immediately that she had not been forgotten, but that the lady’s mind had been bent upon her all along.

“Why did the Orcs attack us?”

Galadriel left her seat and took one next to Belle’s.  “The enmity between Elf and Orc is old,” she said.  “They needed no special cause to defile our borderlands with their foul work.  They have done so before.”

“Then why didn’t they just kill us?”  Belle insisted.  “Why did they take my pups?”

“They may have intended to kill you, at first.  But they did not anticipate meeting a wizard on the lawn, even one unarmed.  And they are ever on the hunt…”

“Say it,” Belle said, for she already knew.

“On the hunt for things they can make use of, for creatures they can twist to their will.”

“What will they do with them?” Belle whispered, looking at her helpless little hands.

Galadriel drew in a breath.  “I do not know.  But I will try to find out.”

“How?”

“Come to my garden tonight, when the others are asleep.  There we shall see what we can see.”

 

Belle waited in the silent grotto until the moon had risen and all the Elves except the night watchmen had gone to their beds.  Then she crept down a long flight of stone steps to the edge of the little green hollow which she knew was designated for the Lady’s particular use.  There she waited until Galadriel herself appeared, a silver gleam in the night shadows, and beckoned for her to approach the carved basin in the middle of the lawn.

She dipped a finely wrought pitcher into the musical waters that flowed past the foot of the pedestal and emptied it into the basin.  Breathing on it once, she waited until the surface had grown still, then said to Belladonna, “Look into the water, but do not touch it.”

At this point, very little that the Elves did could surprise the Hobbit lass, and without questioning the Lady, Belle stood on the foot of the pedestal and peered into the basin.  At first, she saw only the silhouette of her own reflection, surrounded by the starlit sky, but just when she was about to look up to ask Galadriel if there was something she must do to make the basin work, the surface trembled and she found she was looking at a broad plain in bright sunlight.  The grass was golden and so still that she thought it was nothing more than a single image until a movement off to one side drew her attention.  It looked at first like a line of black ants, but it was moving too quickly to be ants, and as it drew closer she saw the flash of spears in the sunlight and realized that she was looking at the vanguard of a great cavalry, sweeping across the plain at a gallop.  Just as they approached the middle of the field, another dark line swept into view from the other side and Belle flinched as they crashed silently into each other, like waves breaking on a rocky shore.

“Rohan?” she asked. 

Galadriel did not reply, for at that moment the view shifted, closing in on the battle as though Belle were being borne right into the midst of it on the wings of a great bird.  Suddenly she cried out, “Brassy!”

For there was her brother, armed with her father’s dagger and a helm that was a little large for him, but his face behind the cheek guards was unmistakable.  He was in the thick of the fighting, with Men and horses all around him and Orcs hurtling forward from the front and the side. 

Most fell before they reached the place where Isumbras had taken his stand, felled by the spears and arrows of the Rohirrim, or broken by the blows of horses’ hooves.  But one somehow slipped past the vanguard and, spotting a young horse-lord who was fighting at the Hobbit’s side, made for his prey while his back was turned.

“Look out!” Belle shouted in vain. 

The Orc’s sword arm reared up as he launched himself at the young Man, but when the sword fell, the hand went with it, dropping into the grass like a tree limb.  The Orc fell sideways, and there stood Isumbras, holding the dagger that had just proven its worth and looking every bit as surprised as the Orc.  The young horse-lord fought on, never even knowing he had been in danger.

But suddenly Brassy pitched forward, and Belle’s cry of alarm was checked in her throat when she saw an Orc loom up over him, raising a club to strike again.  She could not scream; she could only watch in horror.

Then, the Orc turned its head, its attention drawn by a shout that Belle could not hear.  Out from the midst of the fray rode Isengrim on a stout blond pony, his mouth open in a bitter taunt and his father’s old sword raised in challenge.  The Orc bared its teeth, and whether it was sneering or laughing Belle could not tell.  But in the next instant it had leapt at the little pony and knocked Grim clean out of the saddle.

The Hobbit lad was as stout as his beast, however, and he rolled away and jumped back to his feet.  Raising his sword again, he charged at the grey-skinned creature, which had turned its attention back to the fallen Isumbras.  Grim took a great swipe with his blade across the back of his enemy’s knees and the Orc fell backward, his club flying from his hand.

“One for the Shire!” Belle cried despite herself.

Her brother stooped and lifted Brassy from the ground.  Casting about for a moment, he spotted his pony, who seemed to be seeking him just as eagerly.  The little beast cantered over and Grim cast his younger brother across the saddle.  He took the pony’s reins and turned to lead him away.

But Belle did not see where her brothers went, because the water suddenly shivered and she was no longer looking at the embattled plain: she was seeing a moonlit road that wound over night-blue hills, and on that road was a figure on horseback.  It was moving quickly, its grey robes flying behind him, and when he swept past a new-mown field, Belle recognized Gandalf.

Yet again, the water shivered and the scene changed, from dark to darker, and at first Belle thought the image had failed entirely.  Then, as she gazed, she discerned the outline of a mass that was darker than the sky behind it, and with an effort she made out the shape of a tower and a high wall mounted with turrets. 

“Where is this place?” she asked, but almost before she had finished her question, a blinding flame leapt into her vision and she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the painful light.

When she lowered it again, the flame had diminished—diminished because it was moving off, away from her and toward the castle wall.  It jostled and sputtered, and in its fitful light she could now see a great, knotted arm carrying the torch, and the twisted body that the arm belonged to, smaller in proportion than the size of the arm would suggest; close around it, she saw several other jostling heads and shoulders.  Another light flared up below the wall, illuminating the inside of a half-raised portcullis, like a candle behind the jagged teeth of a jack-o-lantern.  The Orcs ducked under the bars, and quite on the heels of the last one, the teeth slammed shut, the lights went out, and the vision faded.

Belladonna looked up to see the Lady watching her as much as she watched the water.  “Was it all true?” she asked.

“The Mirror does not lie,” Galadriel said, “though it does not always show things that have already happened.”

“You mean it can tell the future?”

“You might say that.  It shows the past, the present, and what may yet be.  The future is not immovable until it becomes the past, and so sometimes what the Mirror reveals will never come to be.  But that does not mean it is untrue.”

“Then has my brother already fallen, or is that in the future?”

Galadriel thought for a moment, as though she were consulting a narrative in her mind.  “It is not in the future.”

“Is he dead?”

“No, I do not think so.  But he was fortunate to have been rescued when he was.”

“He did some rescuing himself before he was hit,” Belladonna pointed out.  Galadriel smiled.  But then the dark castle rose up in Belle’s mind like a specter, and her Hobbit spirit shuddered.  “What was that place, the last thing we saw?”

“Its name is Dol Guldur,” Galadriel said, as though the taste of the words were bitter on her tongue.  “Often of late has my mind been drawn thither, for a dark power grows there that we have too long ignored.”

“Orcs?”

“Orcs dwell there, and have for many lives of Men, but something else has claimed the tower for itself, and now the Orcs do its bidding.”

“What is it?” Belle whispered.

“This I do not know.  I hope, my young friend, that you never have the cause to find out.”

Belle looked back into the water, which now reflected only her own shadow and the stars around her head.  “I wanted to see what had happened to my wolf pups,” she said.  “Why didn’t it show me where they were?  Are they dead?”

Again Galadriel considered.  “I do not think they are dead, but the Mirror cannot be commanded, and it shows only what is needful for the seeker to know.  We now know that Mithrandir is on his way, riding in haste from Rohan, and we must ready for his coming.”

Belle looked up at the crescent moon shining through the leaves in the west.  “The moon was two days old when we saw Gandalf ride out; that means he’s been on the road for three days.  How long does it take to get from Rohan to Lórien?”

“From the hill country, four days.  Expect Gandalf by tomorrow night.  Then your quest shall continue.”

Belladonna understood this to be the end of their secret conference, and she followed the Lady out of the hollow and bid her good night with as much courtesy as her troubled mind could muster.  Galadriel touched her shoulder in a kindly fashion, then disappeared up the steps of her flet. 

Belle, for her part, sat on a bench in the moonlight and tried to put her mind to the task at hand.  Gandalf was coming, and Thráin the Dwarf lord was still in need of finding; she had promised his daughter.  But she fretted for Brassy, even though the Lady said he was not killed, and—if she was being honest with herself—she worried even more for the two kidnapped wargs.

“I think you will see them again,” came a voice from behind her.

Belle turned to see Arwen, her dark hair gleaming and her silver gown glowing in the moonlight.  The tall Elf seated herself on the bench and patted her hand.

“You mean my brothers, or the pups?” Belle asked, a little ashamed.

“Both,” Arwen smiled, “but I meant the wolves.”

“Can you see into the future?”

“Sometimes,” the Elf said, “for my father’s house has the gift of foresight.  But it is not my mind but my heart that tells me you will see the pups again.”

“I’d rather it be your mind, begging your pardon.  It seems a surer thing.”

Again the Elf smiled.  “Did Gandalf ever tell you how remarkable it was that the wolves came when you called them?”

“He didn’t,” Belle said, “probably because it wasn’t very remarkable at all: they only came about half the time.”

“You underestimate your accomplishment.  Before Lily and Foxglove, no warg had ever been trained by kindness—only by violence.”

“Had anyone ever tried?” Belle said pointedly.

“If not, then you are all the more remarkable, for you would then have been the first who thought it possible.”

“The more’s the pity.”

Arwen nodded her assent.  “But you gave them kindly names, and you trusted them, and they came to love you for it.  My heart tells me that they will not forget that, so don’t lose hope.  You are Belladonna Took, daughter of Gerontius of the Shire, and you are not finished yet.”

“No, I’m not finished,” Belle agreed as the Elf rose and turned to go.  “The problem is I don’t know where to start.”

Arwen turned back.  “Start by waking up tomorrow morning and readying your feet for the road.  You have to begin by setting out.”

“Well, my father says that half of life is showing up,” Belle sighed.  “I reckon I can do at least that.”

Arwen laughed.  “Perhaps that is all that’s needed.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Mordor, there was Dol Guldur....

The next day the wizard arrived, almost as breathless as his tired horse.  He refused to take his ease until he had spoken with the lord and lady.  Belladonna, who had come running when he was announced, turned away when she heard him demand an audience with the Elves, ready to be forgotten again.  But she had not proceeded three paces when he barked after her, “Where are you off to, Belladonna Took?  You’re needed here.”

So the Hobbit lass found herself seated between Celeborn and Gandalf in a counsel that should by rights have been far above her.  In fact, Gandalf did not tell her, but they had put her in the chair usually reserved for Elrond the Half-elven.

Belle debated with herself as the others informed him of the capture of the wargs and the wounding and departure of Saruman: clearly something very important was at hand, yet she had her duties as well.  Finally, just as the wizard opened his mouth to begin, she burst out, “Are my brothers all right?”

Gandalf closed his mouth again and looked at her from under raised eyebrows.  “Isumbras is lightly wounded,” he said, “but I left them both alive, and if they do nothing Tookish while I am away, it is likely that they will remain so.”  Upon seeing the Hobbit lass sag with relief, he smiled.  “Don’t be afraid for them, Belladonna.  They have proven their worth among the Rohirrim, and you can be proud of sharing their name.”

“But what brings you back to Lórien in such haste?” Celeborn asked.

“Dol Guldur,” said Galadriel.  “I’m right, am I not, Gandalf?”

The wizard’s face darkened at the name.  “You generally are, Lady.  But perhaps I bring tidings that you have not yet heard: Elrohir, son of Elrond, brought secret word to me in Rohan that the power ruling Dol Guldur is no longer of Orc kind, as has been the case for so long.  The fortress is now in the sway of one calling himself the Necromancer.”

“Who’s that?” asked Belladonna.

“That’s just the problem,” the wizard explained.  “We do not know.  The world is full of unknown powers, and some powers that are known but have changed their names and their guises.  Time only will tell which this is.”

Galadriel stood up.  “No doubt many risked everything—perhaps lost everything—to discover even this much.  The sons of Elrond do not journey idly; Elrohir gave you a burden along with the message, Gandalf.”

“Yes, as usual,” sighed the wizard.  “It is now my task to enter the castle and learn what this creature is.”

“But you have another task in hand already,” Celeborn reminded him.  “The Dwarf Thráin is still missing.”

“Not missing,” said Belle, and all eyes turned toward her.  “Captive.  Surely he’s in Dol Guldur, Gandalf.”  She glanced at Galadriel, thinking of the black silhouette in her Mirror.

The wizard nodded his head gravely.  “This is my fear.  I do not ask you to go with me, Belladonna Took.  This is not the adventure you signed on for.”

“It is, though,” she said.  “I promised Dís I would find her father, and I put no conditions on that promise.  What sort of person would I be if I turned back just because the road leads somewhere I’d rather not go?”

Celeborn looked at her in surprise, as though he were really only seeing her now for the first time.  But Gandalf, after contemplating her for a moment longer, gave a curt nod.  “Then pack your things, my Hobbit lass.  We depart in an hour.”

 

Thus ended Belladonna’s visit to Lórien.  Arwen came to see her off, and after Galadriel had made her courteous farewells, the dark-haired Elf led Belle aside.

“It’s customary among my people to give gifts to those who are departing after a visit,” she said.  “Do you do such a thing in the Shire?”

“We give gifts to our hosts when we arrive for a visit,” Belle said, feeling a little gauche.  “And we give presents to our guests at birthday parties.”

Arwen smiled.  “Birthdays mean little to the Elves, and so we have this custom instead.”  She handed Belle a small grey pouch on a thong of silver thread.

“What is it?” Belle asked, feeling the weight of it in her hands.

“Open it and see.”

She did as she was instructed and into her palm the pouch poured a little cascade of shining black stones.

“These are river stones out of the Anduin,” Arwen explained.  “I think they should fit into your sling.  You journey into danger, my friend, and it is wise to be prepared.  Best not to trust to luck for ammunition in a battle.”

“Thank you,” Belle said, and she hung the pouch around her neck and made sure her sling was secured to her belt.

“May the Valar speed your journey,” said the Elf in her native tongue.

“And yours as well,” Belle replied in elvish.  She realized later that she had used the plural “you” instead of the singular, but Arwen did not correct her grammar.

 

She and Gandalf were carried across the river in an elven boat, and then the set off east toward a dark patch on the horizon.

“Mirkwood,” the wizard explained.  “Dol Guldur sits in its southern deeps, and before you ask, it is not nearly as far away as I would like.  We should reach the edge of the wood by tomorrow evening.”

The weather was fine for a trek across country: sunny and dry but with a cool breeze that signaled the coming of autumn.  As they walked, Belle told Gandalf more about the capture of Lily and Foxglove, and Gandalf told Belle about the deeds of her brothers in the battle against the Orcs.  “That horse lord may never know he owes his life to a Hobbit from the Shire, and Isumbras may not yet know who it was he saved, but that young rider was Thengol of the house of Eol, crown prince of Rohan.”

“Royalty!” cried Belle.  “If Brassy ever finds out, he’ll lord it over Grim forever.”

“Perhaps we’d best not tell him, then,” said the wizard with a conspiratorial wink.  “But Grim needn’t be ashamed of himself, for he brought down more than one Orc with the Old Took’s dagger, and after all, Isumbras himself owes his life to his brother’s courage.”

Belle beamed with pride and hurried along in Gandalf’s wake.

The dark line of woods seemed to come no closer as the afternoon went on, but when they had bivouacked overnight in a grassy hollow and Belladonna saw it in the light of the next morning, she understood Gandalf’s statement of the day before: it was far closer than she liked, no matter how far away it was.

And it did grow taller as they journeyed that second day—taller and more distinct, until Belle could see the peaks of pines and the domes of great oaks rising above the crowns of the shorter trees. 

“I don’t like the looks of it,” she commented as they trekked along.  “How could the Elves settle in Lórien with such a place right on their doorstep?”

Gandalf paused and to pick a tuft of tangled grass from the foot of his walking stick.  “Mirkwood was not always evil.  In fact, it is not wholly evil even now: there are Elves living in it, farther north, and they are different from the Elves of Lórien, but they are fair and wise in their own way.”

“So wise they let someone who calls himself a Necromancer move into their back garden?”

The wizard shrugged.  “No one can be perfectly vigilant.  Not even Lady Galadriel, for though she knew something was amiss in Dol Guldur, she let her fears sleep.  And now we find ourselves on a road that none of the wise had foreseen.”  He paused.  “I say ‘road’ figuratively, of course.  Where we’re going, we make our own trails.”

“I didn’t expect anything less,” Belle sighed.

The travelers moved on again, but they fell into silence as Mirkwood loomed ever closer, stilled by the threat of the forest.

The last hour of daylight found them right up under the eaves of the wood, and, as other Hobbits would later discover for themselves, Belladonna found that the more oppressive the mood became, the less frightened she actually was.  As Gandalf stood gazing into the impenetrable darkness between the trunks, the Hobbit lass plucked his sleeve and asked, “What’s our plan?”

The wizard looked down at her as though he had forgotten she was there.  “Plan?  Well, as far as one _can_ plan for such an adventure, I suggest we approach the fortress from the south, for the Necromancer is likely to have concentrated his guard facing north, where he fears attack by the wood Elves.”

“And once we’ve approached it?”

“Try to find a way in,” Gandalf said, as though it was obvious.

“Getting in isn’t what I’m worried about,” Belle replied.  “It’s finding a Dwarf-shaped needle in a castle-shaped haystack that worries me.  That, and getting out again once we’ve found him.”

“All in due time.  You’ve filled your water skin?  We’ll find no safe streams in this part of the wood.  You’re ready?  Onward, then.”  And he plunged into the darkness.

Readers of the Red Book will already know the perils and the smothering oppression of traveling through Mirkwood, but while other travelers those readers may be familiar with encountered these perils on the path, Gandalf and Belladonna braved them in the trackless wild where neither Elf nor Man had journeyed since time out of mind.  Only by the ancient learning of the wizard did the pair avoid losing themselves in the winding darkness that grew more and more complete the deeper they walked into the wood.  And only the personal experience of the wizard urged him to warn his later travel companions so gravely against leaving the path.

Belladonna soon lost track of how long they had been in Mirkwood: after the first dawn, the trees grew too dense for even the faintest ray of sunlight to filter down through the branches.  It was night eternally.  She did not know it at the time, as she trudged miserably behind the wizard, but she was luckier than some who would later journey into that forest: they met no spiders.

What they did meet, though, was perhaps even worse.  At the end of a long march—the only way Belle could measure time—Gandalf pulled up short and the Hobbit lass quite blundered into his legs.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Can’t you see?”

And then she realized that she could, and what she saw was this: the woods had stopped as abruptly as the wizard had, and above her she saw a patch of moonless sky, ragged around the edges with the intruding branches.  Before them rose the vision from Galadriel’s Mirror: the black outline of a castle wall and towers blocking out the faint light of the stars. 

“How do we get in?”

Gandalf crouched down beside her.  They were perched at the top of a steep rise, so that only the towers stood higher than their heads.  In the dim starlight, Belladonna could see figures passing back and forth on the ramparts, almost at the level of her eyes.  They were much smaller than she would have expected, which she recognized must mean that the castle was much larger.  It was not an encouraging thought.

“Let’s start by getting down this hill,” the wizard suggested. 

He stepped down into a drift of leaves piled up by the wind.  Belle drew herself up and followed.  Less subtly than she would have liked (you recall that Hobbits are particularly skilled at moving silently when they need to), they slipped and slid down the long slope, barking their shins against fallen branches and taking the skin off the heels of their hands trying to control their descent.

Gandalf reached the bottom first, and Belle stumbled after, catching her foot on a stone and tripping past him.  She felt his grip on her shoulder an instant before she realized that her foremost foot was hanging over nothing but empty space.

“What is that?” she gasped, throwing herself backward to safety.

“Dol Guldur has a moat.”

“How do we cross it?”

In the dimness, she saw the wizard point toward their right, and following his finger, she saw a line of lights bobbing toward a sudden orange glow.

“A bridge to the main gate,” she said, recalling the vision in the Mirror.  “We can’t go in the main gate, Gandalf.”

“I know.  But we may find a way under the bridge.  Let’s move in that direction.  Carefully.”

She went in front now, her keen Hobbit eyes picking a way for them along the edge of the precipice.  Not fifty paces from the near end of the bridge, she stopped.  They could see more clearly in the firelight that came from the still-open gate, and what they saw was a narrow bridge of stone, launching itself across the void to meet the gate, which opened in the sheer side of the castle wall like a cave appearing suddenly halfway up the side of a mountain.

“There’s no way in, Gandalf,” she whispered.  “It’s impossible.”

The wizard did not respond, but he seemed to share her despair with a weary sigh.  After a long moment, he said, “Let’s go back.  Perhaps there is a secondary gate somewhere else.”

They turned their backs on the bridge, and from the pitch darkness a heavy fist slammed into the wizard’s face, knocking him to the side.  Belladonna’s cry of alarm was choked off as a second fist closed like a vice on her throat.  More hands came out of the dark to pin her arms to her side, and she felt herself lifted off her feet and borne into the torchlight on the bridge.

The last sight she had of Gandalf was the Orcs binding tarred ropes around his fallen body; in the chaos, she could not see if his eyes were open, and he did not answer when she cried out to him.

They carried her across the bridge in a jostling, yelling, pushing mass of dirty grey bodies, and passed under the castle wall.  The firelight flickered on stone halls and black iron bars as the mob bore her down passage after passage.  She heard the portcullis slam down with a heavy, metallic clang.  She was inside Dol Guldur, but now she was alone, and there was no way out.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our unexpected Hobbit finds an unexpected ally....

Belladonna half expected to be executed on the spot as a spy, but the cackling, whooping Orcs dumped her into a cell in the depths of the fortress and slammed shut the door of rough iron bars.  Immediately she flung herself against them, and finding them completely unshakable, she shouted at her captors as they were turning away.  “What do you want of me?  Where is my friend?”  She withheld his name, fearing to put the famous wizard at greater risk if, by some miracle, the Orcs did not yet know who he was.

“You’ll see,” said one of the Orcs in the Common Tongue, and she was not sure which question he was answering.  “But you’ll have to wait.”

“How long?”

The Orc said something in his own guttural speech and the others barked with harsh laughter.  Then, without a word more, they left, taking the torches with them.

There was no window in the cell, so our Hobbit lass was left in complete and utter darkness.  But, as you will remember, Hobbits do not easily panic or lose their heads in emergencies, and in a few moments, her exploring hands were quite familiar with the confines of her prison.  The cell was small—perhaps five feet wide and six deep, and she could reach the ceiling if she stood on tiptoe—but for a Hobbit, these dimensions were not cramped.  The walls were made of cold, rough-hewn stone, and trickles of water ran down them and collected in a puddle on the floor, which in turn ran out into the gutter in the passage outside.  There was a stone bench, equally cold but less wet, and nothing else.  But, she realized with a leaping heart, the Orcs had not taken from her the sling or Arwen’s pouch of river stones.  She was still armed.

“Well,” she said aloud into the thick silence, “I won’t die of thirst, and there’s a place to sit out of the water.  It could be worse, all in all.”

To her surprise, she heard a hoarse laugh echoing off the walls.  “Who’s there?” she demanded.

“I might ask you the same thing,” came the reply.  “You are the newcomer: you must announce yourself.” 

The voice sounded like that of a youth, and though it spoke in the Common Tongue, the words were accented and foreign-sounding.

“First tell me if I’m speaking to an ally of the Necromancer or an enemy,” Belle said.

“I am no friend of the lord of Dol Guldur.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Put your hand through the bars on the far right of your cell door,” the youth replied.

I suppose this person might just as easily be planning to cut it off as give it a shake, Belle thought to herself, but she put her hand through the bars anyway.  A set of cold fingers groped for hers and, drawing her out to the length of her arm, guided her hand through the bars of the neighboring cell, where she touched a hollow cheek.

“Well,” she sighed, forcing down the stab of pity she felt for the wasted figure, “we’re neighbors.”  She withdrew her hand gently and sat on a nearly dry patch of floor with her back against the bars.  “I’m Belladonna Took of the Shire.  A Hobbit.  You might call us halflings where you’re from.”

“I think we do not call you anything where I am from,” the youth replied.  “I am Herumi, daughter of King Fuinur of the Haradrim.”

“Southrons!” Belle exclaimed.  “Oh, do the Big People tell terrible stories of your folk in Bree.  How is it that you’re in the Necromancer’s dungeon instead of his drawing room?”

“Would it surprise you to know that in Far Harad they tell terrible stories of the Men of the north?”  Belle thought about that until Herumi went on.  “I expect I am in the dungeon for the same reason you are: the Necromancer is not pleased with us.”

“I think it was the Orcs that were displeased in my case, but I hope your story is more interesting than being caught trespassing.”  Belle was feeling a little ashamed of her outburst and hoped that showing a polite interest in her new neighbor would smooth things over.

“You came to Dol Guldur by choice?  I have been here for nearly a year, and never have I heard such a thing from a prisoner of the Necromancer.”

“Have…have there been many?  Prisoners?”

“They come and go.”

That was hardly encouraging.  “I was on an adventure in Mirkwood,” Belle explained, not wishing to share the facts of her mission with this stranger, fellow prisoner though she was.  “Getting captured by Orcs was not part of the plan.  But how do you know you’ve been here a year?  It’s pitch dark: how do you ever see the sun to count the days?”

“It’s dark because it’s night.  There is a portal at the end of the passage: once a day, for an hour or so, a little ray of sun shines through it, if the weather is fair.  And even when it’s not, the passage grows grey like the twilight.  I have counted three hundred and thirty-two days since the Orcs left me here.”

Belle’s efforts to stifle her Hobbit tendencies failed almost immediately.  “They do feed their prisoners, don’t they?”

“Black bread and bitter water, once a day.  It tastes foul, but it is sustaining enough.”

“And where _are_ the other prisoners?”  Since the Orcs had vacated the area, the passageway was eerily silent.

“There are many dungeons in Dol Guldur, and many towers too, I think,” said Herumi.  “But they are seldom occupied by the same person for long.”

Belle liked the sound of that even less.  “How is it that you’ve been here a whole year, then?” she asked with a hint of suspicion creeping back into her voice.

“Because I am not a trespasser: I am a hostage.”

The girl proceeded to explain that her father the king had been approached by emissaries of the Necromancer the winter before last.  They had demanded a tribute of metalwork and horses, for the swift, fearless creatures bred by the Haradrim were the wonder of the southern world.  But Fuinur had refused to bow to a tyrant, and in retribution, the Necromancer’s forces had seized his only daughter, dragging her back to Mirkwood to await the softening of the king’s resolve.

“It is right for my father to refuse him,” said Herumi fiercely.  “The Necromancer may conquer others, but he will never win the Haradrim while they can defend themselves against him, no matter the cost.  It is right for the king to sacrifice one life to save all the others.  But…”  Her voice trailed off.

“But it’s a hard lot for the one who gets sacrificed,” Belle suggested.

“Yes.  It is hard.”

The Hobbit sat for a moment in silence, contemplating what she had just heard.  “I don’t suppose there’s any way of escaping?”

“The only way out is through the cell door.  And beyond the door are Orcs and other things more terrible than that.  And even if you reach the main gate, then there’s the portcullis, and the bridge.  You’ve seen for yourself.”

“Have you ever tried to get out?”

“Have I!  I could show you the marks of the lash on my back to prove it.”

“Well,” Belle said in concession.  Well, she was thinking, you didn’t have a wizard with you.

 

Herumi was right about all the particulars of their captivity, of course: they were fed once a day, and once a day the pale light showed them the walls of the passage opposite their cells, though behind the iron bars all remained as dark as pitch.  The Orcs were also right: they had to wait.  The princess of Harad had more or less resigned herself to the endlessness of that wait, but Belladonna grew increasingly restless, swinging between hope that Gandalf would pull a miraculous escape out of the folds of his robe and fear that the old wizard had been slain on the spot during their capture.  But much worse than that were the problems closer to home.  She grew cold with dread whenever the door to the passage thudded open: was it the turnkey coming to thrust the stale bread through the slot in the bars, or was it an Orc coming to question her as a spy?  What sorts of tortures might lie in store for the daughter of the Old Took?  And why was it taking so long?

To stave off her fear, she engaged Herumi in conversation whenever she could, peppering her with questions about the Haradrim—their clothing, their customs, and most importantly, their food.  Herumi proved a good talker, and in the first ten days of her captivity, Belladonna had learned more about the history, language, and customs of Harad than any save a very few of the northern people, Man, Hobbit, or Elf.

One of the things she learned might be of greater interest to readers of the Red Book than it was to her: the Haradrim were very proud of their skills in gardening, and Herumi told Belle much about the famous gardens of Belfalas and Umbar, but because they were ornamental more than they were functional, the Hobbit lass could only make appreciative noises without much enthusiasm.  However, Herumi also told her a legend of how the Haradrim had first become master gardeners, a legend that involved spirits in the form of fair trees like the apricot and the almond.  These tree spirits instructed the Haradrim in the building and care of gardens, orchards, and mazes so magnificent that the Númenorians, long ago, flocked to visit them, just to walk in the fragrant lanes of floating blossoms.

“The tree spirits are seldom seen now,” Herumi concluded, “and some Men of learning think they are only an old wives’ tale.  But the legend goes that some of them may have gone a-wandering, looking for their husbands, whom they said had once been very stubborn and haughty but whom they hoped might have finally learned better wisdom.”

It is only fair to admit that their husbands told the story rather differently, but as Belle never knew a thing about it either way, this is all that is remembered of their history in this tale.

 

Considering the mildness of her adventures so far, Belladonna held up surprisingly well under the conditions of her imprisonment. The dark, the cold, the meager rations (which readers of the Red Book will have heard other Hobbits lament at some length), all of it touched her spirits but lightly. It was the fate of the wizard that most troubled her: was he alive? And if he was alive, what tortures might he be suffering at the hands of the castle’s master? Only the companionship of Herumi made her able to bear these fears.

But the beasts, perhaps, were the worst of all. From the first, Belle heard the dungeons rumbling with the deep force of an earthquake, but quakes had never been recorded north of the empty southern lands. Something was shaking the walls. Something big.

Then there were the creatures that stalked the corridor onto which her cell opened: black, brown, perhaps even blue bodies would pass in the night, recognizable by their stench more than by their shapes in the dim light of the moon. They were massive, bristling with coarse hair, and several times Belle was sure she counted more than the usual number of legs. When she asked Herumi about them, though, the doughty girl said only, “Do not look at them. Do not speak of them. They are evil.”

Time passed in this way. How much time she could not tell, for she lacked Herumi’s attention to detail in measuring the track of the sun along the wet stones and she did not ask to be enlightened. Better not to know. But surely it was long. A month, two months, three. No number would have surprised her in those endless waking hours.  She came to the conclusion that her continued safety must be attributed to one of two things: either Gandalf was occupying the whole of the Necromancer’s attention and so preventing his mind from turning to the other captive taken on that night—or she had been forgotten.  She was not sure which was worse: she could only wait.  And wait, and wait, and wait.

 

Then, as is usually the case in adventures, something happened. Belladonna was dowsing on her bench sometime after their daily meal had been thrust through the bars onto the damp floor when she heard something in the passage. It was not an Orc, for they moved clumsily and swiftly, clanking in their armor and rattling the bars of the cells as they passed. This was a creature, padding slowly and warily like a beast on the prowl. Belle counted the footfalls and shuddered: there were more than two.

She held her breath, hoping the thing would pass her by, but then she heard the footpads stop at the gate of her cell. She heard it inhaling her scent through the bars. She heard it scratch experimentally at the stones. It was going to find a way in.

On the Hobbit-like principle that it is best to know the worst up front, Belladonna sat up and rolled off the bench, crouching low to spy out the fell creature before it came at her. Her hand went to the sling still tucked in her belt.

The creature was enormous, the size of a pony (which you must recall is the size of a horse to a Hobbit), slavering and dripping with tar or mud...or blood. Its true color, glimpsed in the moonlight under the ghoulish gloss of whatever covered it, might have been grey. Belle fitted one of Arwen’s river stones into her sling, her hands shaking involuntarily. 

The beast’s efforts to break into the cell intensified. It was snarling now, tearing at the bars with its fangs, which glinted in the dark. It would be inside in a moment, surely. Nothing could withstand those teeth. Belle started whipping her sling around and around, ready to release the stone inside. She would get only one chance. 

Then, as a cloud cleared away from the invulnerable moon so far above the castle, a last dim beam fell upon the creature’s paw, illuminating a single white toe.

“Foxglove?” Belle gasped.

The tearing stopped and the beast did not move, as though suddenly paralyzed by the sound of that word from so long ago.

“Foxglove,” Belle said again, now certain. Tears came to her eyes. “What’s happened to you, dear one?” Heedless of the danger, she thrust her little hand through the bar and touched the dripping muzzle of the warg. 

Foxglove inhaled deeply, then laid his teeth against her flesh. She did not pull back, and in the next moment, the teeth were replaced by a slavering tongue.

“There’s my dear one!” Belle laughed through her tears. What deep hidden force had driven the tormented creature into the dungeons, what power had made him seek her when he did not recall her face, Belle did not ask. Not now. Now, she had a task to do.

“Foxglove, is Lily here?” The warg said nothing, and the Hobbit lass felt a surge of relief: he had not yet been tortured into speech. But she thought she felt his body wag with the motion of his tail at the name of his sister. “Dear one, you must do something for me. The jailer’s keys. I think they’re next to the door at the end of the hall. Fetch them for me, Foxglove.”

The wolf trotted off immediately and she heard him rustling about for a moment. Then he was back, a heavy ring of keys hanging from his foaming jaw.

“Good boy, Foxglove, good boy!” Belle took the ring and, as quietly as she could for fear of drawing the attention of a passing patrol, she systematically fitted key after key into the lock until one of them slid home.

For the first time since her imprisonment, the door opened with a groan and Belle stepped out of her cell. She threw herself upon the wolf despite his reeking wetness and covered his trembling face with tears and kisses. 

“Now, Foxglove,” she said at last, “I need you to go and find your sister. Go find Lily, then get out. You don’t belong to them anymore, do you hear me? Nothing will stop you from being free. Nothing. Go, dear one, go!”

The warg did not hesitate. He took off down the passage and shoved his way past the heavy door at the end, which, for the convenience of the guards, was only pushed to and not locked. Belle watched him go, then set to work unlocking Herumi’s cell door.

Herumi had remained silent as long as the great, menacing creature had been in the passage. She spoke up now, though. “You know that monster? You can command it?”

“He’s not a monster, just a captive like us. And I didn’t command him; I asked him to do something and he agreed. He’s never done anything I asked if he didn’t want to.”

The cell door swung open with an even deeper groan and Herumi stumbled into the passage. Hobbit lass and Southron had their first look at each other in the half light of the moon, which had come out from behind the cloud for the occasion. Herumi was taller and had long black hair, but beyond that, they could perceive precious little difference between themselves in their dirty, wet, half-starved state. 

“It’s nice to meet you finally,” Belle said.

“And you. But we must not stand in the hall passing the time of day. What is our plan of escape?”

“You can go right away if you like,” Belle said. “If we go now, before they know we’re free, they won’t be on the lookout. Surely the gate can’t be hard to find. But I can’t leave yet, not without Gandalf and Thráin, if they’re even still alive. I gave my word to find Thráin, and Gandalf is my friend; he wouldn’t leave me if our positions were reversed.”

Herumi looked longingly at the moon though the window. But then she said, “You cannot find both of your friends and also escape. Go search for the Dwarf; I will find the wizard, if he is to be found.”

Belle’s face lit up. “You will? Thank you, my friend! Thank you. Go quickly, and take care. I’ll wait for you in the woods beyond the gates if I make it out.” She started toward the door, then paused. “If we both win out of this, there will always be a warm welcome for you in the Shire.”

Herumi smiled. “As there will be for you in Harad. Good luck, my friend.”

They shook hands, walked together to the door, and, seeing in the blinding orange torchlight that met their eyes through the crack that no Orcs were waiting in the passage beyond, they passed through, parted ways, and ran.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belladonna finds what she's looking for--and more besides.

What does a Necromancer do with a captive Dwarf? Belle asked herself as she slipped around a corner and paused in the shadows to listen for footsteps.  The possibility that Thráin was imprisoned in the fortress had long since passed into a certainty for her, and the question now was not whether he was here but where. 

The first step was to get what the Old Took always called “the lay of the land.”  The Hobbit lass had been confined in a dank cell for perhaps months on end, but true to her kind, she did not easily lose her sense of direction underground, so she knew even now how the castle stood in relation to the points of a compass.  But how many levels were there, and was Thráin likely to be held in the dungeons or up a tower? 

Belle padded silently along the corridor on which she had found herself, flattening her small frame into the darkest corners when she heard the trudge of passing Orcs.  But clearly the escape had not yet been discovered, for they were off their guard and slouched along under their own private miseries.  It was not long after sundown, and Belle guessed they might have the better part of the night before their empty cells were visited by the jailer.  As they were sure to need every moment for their search, she was grateful.

Spotting a narrow doorway ahead to her left, she approached with care and laid her ear to the rough-hewn oak.  It was silent on the other side, and the door itself was secured only by a heavy wooden beam a short distance above her head.  With a great deal of effort, she lifted the beam out of its braces, but she had to stretch to her full height to do so, and she lost her balance just for an instant. She recovered, but the beam tipped off her fingers and crashed to the stone floor with a thunderous noise that echoed endlessly down the passage.

Belle froze, waiting for the sound of racing feet.  But none came.  Either there were no Orcs nearby—an unlikely circumstance, she thought—or they were so accustomed to the horrible noises of the castle’s daily workings that they did not pick out this blow as different from any other.  When her heartbeat returned to normal, Belle pushed the beam out of the way and opened the door.

It led, not onto another passageway, but onto a rampart that overlooked the moat.  She crept out onto the walk, feeling the wind in her hair for the first time in months, and peered cautiously over the edge.

She was higher above the moat than she had suspected, and even in the dimness of the shrouded moon, she could see arrow slits and spouts pouring foul runoff arranged in four or five layers below her.  The Necromancer’s dungeons were extensive indeed.  How would she ever find Thráin?  How would Herumi find Gandalf?

Just then, she heard from almost directly below her the sharp crack of a whip, followed by a moan so feeble she could scarcely believe it was a response to such a blow.  Whoever had uttered it must be barely clinging to life.

The Tookish part of her took over immediately.  Heedless of her mission, she dived back through the door and fled down the passage until she found a dark spiral stair at its far end.  It might not be Thráin down there at all, but that did not matter.  She had to try to help.

She could not be sure whether the chamber she sought was two or three levels down, so she left the stair on the first likely passage and crouched in a lightless corner to peer along it.  A guttering torch at the far end showed her a row of cells on each side, identical to the one with which she was now so intimately familiar.  She could hear ragged breathing coming from at least one—but nothing else.  There were no Orcs in sight.

She tore herself away and continued down the stairs, willing herself to forget those desperate, shallow breaths and the poor creature that produced them.  She could not save them all, and the one she was seeking was in more urgent need.

When she arrived on the next level down, she knew she had found the right place, for as soon as she stepped into the passage, she saw a large, stooping Orc in the process of stepping out of a cell partway down the row.  The less Tookish part of her made a return at this point, and she shrank into the shadows to hide until it was gone.

“Sleep well,” the creature sneered in the Common Tongue.  It slammed the iron gate with unnecessary force and stalked away around the far corner, slinging the whip casually over his shoulder like a gardener shouldering his rake.  He took the torch from its sconce as he passed it, leaving the corridor in moonlight.

As soon as his heavy footsteps had receded, Belle ran to the cell door and pressed her face against the bars to see inside.  At first there was only blackness, but then a filthy hand shot out and seized her wrist.  She fell backward instinctively, biting back a cry, but the hand was surprisingly strong and she could not break away.

“Who are you?” came a raspy whisper.

Belle was not sure whether she should reveal her name before the captive had given his.  “A friend,” she said.  “Pleasantries later.  Where are the keys?”

“He took them with him,” the voice replied.

Belle’s heart sank.  Clearly this was a more valuable prisoner than she and Herumi had been.

“I…I don’t know—” she began.

“Don’t need the keys,” the voice interrupted her.  “The pins inside the hinges: loose.  Pry them out and….”  The prisoner made a toppling gesture with his free hand.  “But I can’t reach from here.” 

Belle thought he could hardly have the strength for the task even if he could reach, but choosing to believe his words despite the unorthodox manner in which they were delivered, she retrieved the hand that he had released and got to work.

The bottom hinge she found she could, indeed, pry apart, lifting out the pin that held the two halves in place.  Pocketing the pin, she looked dubiously at the upper hinge, well above her head.  “I can’t reach it,” she said.

The prisoner immediately thrust his hands through the bars and interlaced his fingers.  “Leg up,” he grunted.

Belle hesitated to tax those poor, bloodied hands, but the bones under the wasted flesh were thick and stout, so at last she placed her foot gently into the cup of his palms and raised herself up to the level of the hinge.  Working from below, she had a more difficult task of freeing the pin, but after several attempts, between which the captive massaged his hands while pretending to dry them on his legs, the second pin fell with a surprisingly heavy _plonk_ onto the stone floor.

Quickly Belle pulled the door open, swinging it now on its lock like a single, crooked hinge.  From inside the cell she heard the hollow scraping of stone on stone, and when the prisoner stumbled out into the moonlight, he was just withdrawing his hand from the breast of his tunic.  Belle could see an irregular shape under the thin fabric, but the unasked question died on her lips when she raised her eyes to his face.

He was taller than she, or would have been if he had been able to stand straight, but his shoulders were bowed with weariness and the weight of blows that had left them scarred and bruised under his torn tunic.  His face was haggard and pitted as though he had stood under a fall of burning rain.  Piercing eyes looked out from under his brows like black stars, but they shifted constantly, never settling on her or on anything else for more than a few heartbeats.  He looked nothing like his ruddy, doughty kinsmen.  It was only his beard, shot with grey among the wiry black hairs, that looked truly dwarvish.

“Thráin,” Belle said.

“At your service,” he replied with a rusty bow.  He tottered, and Belle caught him just in time, but when she saw a look of mortification cross his pale face, she disguised the gesture as a handshake.

“Belladonna Took,” she said.

At the sound of her name, his eyes searched her face for a brief moment, sparking with a half-remembered connection, but then his gaze flitted away down the corridor chasing a different thought. 

When he said nothing more, Belle tried to bring him back.  “Dís sent me to find you.”

He did not reply.

“Dís?” she repeated more distinctly.  “Your daughter.”

He grunted, still searching the passageway with his eyes.  “Come,” he said suddenly, “we must find Thorin.”

“Thorin?” Belle echoed.  “But Thráin, he’s off in the Blue Mountains.”

“Mmm,” was the only response she received as he cast a glance up and down the corridor, decided on a direction, and set off toward the dark stair with surprising speed.

“Thráin,” the Hobbit lass whispered with increasing urgency as she chased after his bent form, “your son is safe.  Dís told us where he is.”

“Dís,” he repeated without recognition or interest.

“We have to get out of here.  Do you know the way out?”

“Out.  Out, out, out,” the Dwarf muttered with every step downward.  But somewhere in his repetitions, the word became “Thorin, Thorin, Thorin.”

Belle padded helplessly after him, wracking her brain for a way to break into his thoughts, when suddenly, he dodged through a door on their right and left the winding stair behind.

She darted after him and blundered straight into his back, for he had stopped dead in his tracks.  At the other end of the corridor ahead was a patrol of Orcs carrying pikes in one hand and torches in the other.  Some impulse other than conscious will had stopped the Dwarf, though, because although his feet had fallen still, he watched the Orcs approaching with an unseeing eye, still chanting, “Thorin, Thorin” absently under his breath.

Belle clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him into the shelter of a doorway, hoping the Orcs had been too preoccupied with their own barking speech to spot the two little escapees up ahead.

Luck was with them: the Orcs passed by, the last one swinging his pike in a wide, lazy arc that almost clipped Thráin’s tunic.  But neither did the Orc watch his weapon as it passed nor, Belle thought, did Thráin notice the near miss.

She held onto him until the foul-smelling patrol had passed around the corner and down the south passage.  Then she released her grip and crept a few steps up the west corridor, whispering over her shoulder, “The coast is clear.”  But when she turned around, Thráin was gone.

Belle sprinted back the way she had come and found the Dwarf stalking down the other hall in the same direction the Orcs had just gone.

“Thráin, not that way!” she hissed.

But he pressed on, as silently as a Dwarf could go, though to a Hobbit he still made an alarming racket.  Halfway down the passage, he paused, turning his head left and right like a great, slow hound trying to pick up a scent.  His feet turned, and he pushed open the door on his left and walked through.

Pursuing him, Belladonna found him walking with a slow but determined gait down yet another passage, this one lined not with cells but with heavy wooden doors, which were interspersed with torches in sconces every dozen paces.  This hall could not be perpetually untenanted like the dungeon corridors were.  Pulling the door to behind her so as not to advertise their path, the Hobbit lass returned to following her charge.

“We have to get out of here, Thráin,” she whispered at his back.  “Thráin!”

But without acknowledging that he even heard her, the Dwarf stopped suddenly again, turned left, and laid a hand on the door in the wall.  “Out, out, out,” he muttered.

This door had only a heavy wrought-iron ring on the outside, but when Thráin lifted it and pulled, nothing happened.  He pulled harder, then, growing agitated, rattled the ring in frustration.

“Shh!” Belle hissed.  But seeing he had no intention of going anywhere but through that door, she laid a hand on his shoulder.  “Step back and let me see.”

Reluctantly, Thráin let his hand fall from the latch and he took a single step away from the door.  Belle pressed her eye to the crack; she could make out nothing on the other side except for a faint glow as from torchlight, but across the strand of light she could see what held the door closed: a black bar of iron about as wide as two of her fingers.

“This must be a back door,” she said to Thráin.  “It’s got a latch that opens from the inside.  See for yourself.”

Thráin seemed to be listening now, and he peered through the crack to confirm her words.  “The pin,” he said when he’d finished his inspection.

“What pin?”

The Dwarf just held out his hand impatiently until Belle remembered that she had pocketed the pin from the bottom hinge of Thráin’s cell.  She fished it out and handed it to him.  It only just fit between the stone frame and the edge of the door, but Thorin was deft despite his condition, and it took him only a few seconds to lift the latch and, with a little jerk, flip it up, over, and out of the way.  The door swung open silently.

What they saw was not another corridor but a long, narrow chamber, lit similarly by torches at regular intervals along both walls.  Between the torches were alcoves in the stone, like shrines to unknown gods: nine on the left, seven on the right.  Thráin strode purposefully down the length of the room toward the door at the far end, and Belladonna followed him.  Most of the shrines on the right were empty, but on the left, with the exception of the last one, each of the alcoves held a black spike of perfectly smooth stone, and on each spike was a ring of bright metal.

Inexplicably, Belle’s heart began to beat harder, and her footsteps slowed against her will.  The rings were very beautiful.  She had almost decided to stop to look at them more closely when she realized that Thráin, up ahead, had stopped himself, and was looking with the fixed gaze of a lover into the last shrine on the right.

Belle joined him and beheld a ring almost copper-colored but more luminous—the words “red gold” presented themselves to her mind as though someone else had thought them; she had never heard of such a thing.  A perfect oval of black onyx was set in the bright metal, and she could see Thráin’s face reflected in its surface.

He saw hers as well, and with a reproachful sound that resembled the snarl of an angry badger, he drove her back with the sudden fierceness in his face.  Only when Belle had retreated with her hands raised in a helpless, placating gesture did he turn back to the shrine.  He looked on it for another long moment, his hand raised but hesitating, until finally he overcame his awe and stretched out his fingers.  As soon as they touched the ring, he was galvanized into action, snatching it and burying it swiftly inside his tunic.  Not until he had it safely stowed did he finally turn back to Belle.

“I have my own,” he said, his voice growing in strength but his eyes still starting in his head.  “Now, out.”

Belle stared at him.  All that time she had heard him chanting his son’s name, had he in fact been saying, “The ring”?

Without so much as a glance at the other shrines, the Dwarf turned on his heel and strode toward the door in the wall opposite the one by which they had entered.  Belle told her feet to hurry after him, for he moved briskly now, but her feet did not do as she bade them.  She found herself lingering in this strange hall, her eyes drawn to each ring as she passed it.  No two were the same, unless it was in beauty, and in a pause between breaths, she almost thought she heard a whispering of voices.  She stopped to listen, but the sound—if it had existed—was suddenly gone, replaced by the heavy thud of a bolt being thrown back in the door Thráin now heaved open.

Belle had only time to think, as in a dream, “How were both doors locked from the inside?” when she realized why there had been no guard on the room when they entered.

The doorway in which Thráin now stood, frozen like a startled deer, opened onto another corridor.  But this one was not empty.  Four Orcs on patrol at the other end of the passage stopped mid-stride at the thud of the door and stared at Thráin with almost as much dumb surprise as he stared at them.  A long second of complete silence ensued, and then the captain of the patrol shouted in the horrible language of his kind and pointed a long-nailed finger at the Dwarf.

His three subordinates launched themselves down the passage, but before they came anywhere near him, a large, armored Orc—who must have been approaching from the corridor to the left—swung in front of Thráin and felled him with a heavy blow to the head.

The Dwarf went down, but almost before he hit the floor, the large Orc had stooped and seized him up, his great grey arms clamped around Thráin’s chest from behind.  The other Orcs crowded around, shouting in their excitement and making feinting jabs at the captive with their pikes and blades.

This treatment woke the Dwarf from his stupor and he kicked out wildly, striking one in the face and smashing the nosepiece of his metal cap into his teeth.  But the brute who carried him only barked in laughter, hoisted him like a sack of potatoes, and carried him off down the passage, with Thráin still flailing and cursing over the jeers of his captors.

And where was our Hobbit lass while this disaster was unfolding?  Her first instinct, after she, too, recovered from the cold shock of stumbling right into the path of the patrol, was to stand her ground like a cornered animal.  She and Thráin were outnumbered; they were sure to be killed.  But that did not matter.  When had the certainty of defeat ever mattered to the heroes of her father’s stories?

She had her sling out and was fitting a river stone into it when she realized that the shadow of the door had sheltered her from the immediate notice of the Orcs.  Even the large one, when he stepped so suddenly into view, did not notice her in the rush of capturing Thráin.  A faint, absurd hope sprung up inside her: if she could escape the Orcs now, perhaps she could find Herumi and Gandalf and together they could rescue Thráin from whatever new pit he might be cast into.  And so she shrank back into the shadows, choosing shrewdness over valor.  But she paid a high price for it.  Try as she might, she could not close her ears to the desperate shouting of the Dwarf, whose curses changed gradually to supplication—not to the Orcs, but to her.  But let it be remembered as a mark of the courage and loyalty of Dwarves that, even at this darkest moment, he did not speak her name in the hearing of the enemy.

 

With the sound of those terrible cries stabbing hear ears, Belladonna crouched in the chamber and waited—a long, long time—for the stones to stop reproaching her with the echo of the Dwarf’s pleading.  When at last she could hear only the general groans and creaking of the castle’s native works, she poked her head into the passage, saw it empty, and crept out of the room.  She pulled the door to behind her, hoping that perhaps Thráin’s theft would go unnoticed in the uproar over his escape and recapture.

Belle did not know where to seek Gandalf any more than she had known where to seek Thráin, but assuming that an escapee would be destined for the same kind of dungeon as an intruding wizard, she decided to follow the direction taken by the Orc patrol.  She padded silently along the passage for perhaps ten yards until a little glint of metal caught her eye in the flickering torchlight.  In this house of iron and stone, she had seen only one kind of thing that shone as this did, and she knew before she saw it properly that Thráin’s ring had fallen from his tunic in the struggle of his capture.

It was in her hand before she knew she had stooped to pick it up.  She would return it to the Dwarf when he was freed, she told herself, but the thought was only half-formed, and it got lost in her head as she turned the ring over and over in her fingers.  The red gold did not just reflect the torchlight; it absorbed it and gave it back warm and golden.  The onyx gave back nothing at all except the image of her own small face, which she now realized was covered in grime and half-hidden by her unwashed hair.  She rubbed her cheeks and nose with the inside of her tunic and pushed her ratty curls off her forehead—hastily, as though she were ashamed to be seen in this state, though she could not have said who she thought might have been there to see her.

Belle might have stood much longer in the passage, bent over Thráin’s treasure, except that she heard the march of approaching feet and fled away around the corner.  Here she found another spiral stair, going down but not up, and a cold, wet air breathed out of it into her face.  There was no light in its depths. 

She had just decided to go back the way she had come when the clank of armor and shuffling of feet told her that the patrol was about to round the corner behind her.  She had no choice.  Taking a deep breath like a swimmer preparing for a dive into cold water, she plunged down the stair and into the dark.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What does a Necromancer keep in his dungeon? Belladonna is about to find out!

On and on the stair ran down before her feet, and with each turn Belladonna expected to stub her toes on the even ground of a landing, but she did not.  The footfalls of the patrol pursued her, and the voices of the Orcs, complaining and snapping at each other in their boredom and their misery, echoed off the walls and surrounded her as she fled.  They must have carried torches, for they made swifter progress than she did, hastening as she was in the pitch black, and she could hear them gaining on her.

She would never know what made her stop suddenly, out of breath, and flatten herself against the curving wall as though she expected the Orcs simply to pass her by.  But as she waited for them, her hand crept into her pocket.  To pick out a stone for her sling, she told herself.  But when she drew it out again, it was not a stone that she clasped in her palm.

In the darkness, she ran her finger around the perfect circle of the ring, feeling the cold onyx on the pad of her palm.  If she kept running like this, she might well jostle this precious thing right out of her pocket and onto the stairs, where it might roll endlessly down into darkness and be lost forever.  For some reason, the thought made her feel a little sick.  And that is how, without making the conscious decision to do so, Belladonna came to slip the ring onto her index finger.

In the next instant, the light of the Orcs’ torch turned the spiral stair orange with a flare that made Belle cower against the wall, shielding her eyes.  An instant after that, half a dozen grey figures jogged into view, clanking down the stairs, heading straight toward her…and then passing her by without so much as a glance.

How could they have missed her?  When the torchlight faded away into the depths, Belle uncovered her eyes and looked about her in disbelief.  They really had run right past and had not noticed her little form crouching in plain sight.  Orcs must be as stupid as they were cruel.

The immediate danger past, Belladonna told herself she would put the ring back in her pocket.  And so she did, but her index was still inside it, and when she realized this fact, she pulled her hand back out of her pocket but left the ring in place on her finger.  It was safer that way, she told herself, looking at the bright band against her skin.

But why could she see it?  Had the Orcs left their torch?  She turned about, mystified, but there was no more light in the stair than there had been at first.  And yet she could see perfectly well, if dimly, as though by the light of a cold, uncertain dawn.

She looked again at the ring.  She had heard of magic like this in stories.  “I suppose,” she said to herself, muttering aloud without meaning to, “this is the sort of place where things that happen to heroes in stories happen to people like me.”

So she went on, padding as silently as Hobbits ever do down the winding stair, looking for a door or a gateway.  As she walked, she began to suspect that this ring might heighten all her senses, not just her sight.  For she heard all the smallest sounds of the fortress as though they were right next to her ear: she heard the lapping of water in the moat; she heard the sad clanking of a prisoner’s chains as he turned in his sleep; she heard the nightmarish creatures walking about on their too-many legs in passages on the other side of the curving wall.

And she heard them speak.  Their voices were dry and creaking, like the sound of a burning log about to collapse into pieces.  She had heard such sounds before, in the stillness of the night when she lay sleepless in her cell, but she had not understood them as words.  She understood them now, though, and almost despite herself, she slowed her steps to listen.

“I’m hungry,” one hissed.

“There’s a dead prisoner in the fourth dungeon,” said another.

“Dry,” whined the other.  “Dry and stale.  I want fresh meat.”

The other did not answer right away, and when it did, it spoke with crafty hesitation.  “I may know a thing about that.”

“Tell me!”

“Not so hasty,” it said.  “What will you give me in return for a nice, fresh kill?”

It was the other creature’s turn to pause now.  “What do you want?” it asked at last.

“Your mate.”

There was a hiss.  “Not on your life.  I was planning to eat him within the week.  Find your own if you’re so keen.”

“Suit yourself,” said the other.  “It’s all the same to me whether you have spent old attercop in a week or fresh Dwarf in a day.  I was only trying to help.”

Belle stopped dead and pressed her ear urgently to the stone so as not to miss a word.

“Dwarf?” the first beast repeated.  “The one we’ve been watching for so long?  I haven’t tasted Dwarf in ages upon ages.”

The other maintained a studied silence.

“It’s a bargain!” the first cried at last.  “Where is this precious Dwarf of yours?”

The answering hiss was full of greedy pleasure.  “You’ll find him in the Pit.  He was taken there not an hour ago for questioning.  It won’t take them long to be done with him.”

“Your generosity overwhelms me,” said the first with venomous cordiality.  “Enjoy _your_ fun while it lasts.”

“Oh,” came the creaking reply.  “Oh, I will.”

And the voices moved off in a scuttle of too many feet.

All thoughts of Herumi and Gandalf were gone from Belle’s head.  There was only Thráin now, and time was short before there might not even be him.  Putting aside the dim fear that the monstrous creatures might know a way into the spiral stair that she had not seen as she passed, the Hobbit lass broke into a run and half leapt, half stumbled onward into the depths of the fortress.  The Pit had to be at the bottom.

 

And the bottom was not as far away as she might have assumed; not three levels down, the stair ended abruptly at a narrow archway with no door.  Beyond it stretched a passage that branched in several directions, but Belle pressed on straight ahead, sure that the Necromancer’s particular dungeon would be in the center of the castle.  At first, all was silent except for the constant drip of water, as though the Orcs had been told to clear out.  That idea seemed to her to be far more ominous than if they had been permitted to stay.  Then, faintly, the sound of muffled voices reached her ears.  Almost immediately after that, the pearly half-glow that had accompanied her ever since she put on the ring was split apart by a blaze of red and orange firelight piercing through another narrow archway.

Belladonna stumbled back, shielding her eyes.  Instinct won out over desire and she pulled the ring from her hand, sighing as the firelight grew bearable again.  Then she recognized the voice of Thráin, suddenly clear although she had moved no closer. 

“Never,” he declared, “never, never.”

Trying to keep in the shadow of the archway, Belle crept forward to see Thráin, standing unsteadily in the middle of the stone floor with his hands bound.  A tall figure in a black cloak and helm paced back and forth in front of him, holding a sword to the Dwarf’s face.

“Tell me where it is,” the figure snarled.  Its voice, neither Orc nor human, sent a chill through Belladonna’s limbs.

“Never,” Thráin repeated.

The figure flicked the sword tip, almost lazily, and a bead of bright red blood appeared on the Dwarf’s cheek.  Lines and wedges of blood on his other cheek and on the beardless sides of his neck bore witness to how long the game had already been running.  Thráin hardly flinched, but his knees were buckling with the effort to hold himself up.

“Tell me where it is,” the figure said again.

Again the refusal, again the lazy flick of the sword and the bloom of fresh blood, this time on Thráin’s temple.

Belle closed her eyes and tried to close her heart against what she was witnessing: she could not save Thráin if she simply charged in and threw herself onto the interrogator’s sword-point.  Instead, she inched through the archway and started along the left-hand wall of the Pit, trying to circle around to where she might be able to send a stone at that black helmet while leaving Thráin a clear path to escape.  It occurred to her that this plan would put the black figure between herself and the doorway, but she dismissed the fact as unimportant.

The Pit was a large chamber, easily fifty Hobbit paces across, and the height of the ceiling was indistinguishable in the darkness above.  It appeared to be completely empty but for the stone archways that opened onto it—a single opening on each level, stacked one above the other.  She wondered with a shudder why there were no stairs inside leading down from them.  For a moment it was unclear where the bright firelight was coming from, as there was neither furnace nor forge in the walls of the chamber, but as she progressed around the circular room, her angle of observation changed.  She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry: she understood now why Thráin was not backing away from the sword.

Behind the Dwarf the stone floor simply fell away, so that in fact there was a pit within the pit.  And in that well of stone lay the largest serpent Belle had ever seen.  It was a deep, jewel-like red, and its massive, sharp-featured head rested warily on top of the coils of its body.  Its glowing yellow eyes followed the movement of the helmed figure above.  All around the creature were heaps of burning stone.

As Belle watched, stunned into petrifaction, the sword gave another flick and a spurt of blood spattered onto the serpent’s face.  The blood sizzled like water flung into a frying pan and the creature gave a high, screeching cry and reared up, unfolding its massive body.

It was not a serpent.  It had arms and legs and a heavy body that was bright white underneath.  And it had wings—featherless wings like a bat’s but as large as the mainsails of a ship.  The dragon drew itself up and poured out a torrent of flame from its mouth, setting the stone around it aglow with renewed heat.

The black figure did not quail from the heat, but nor did it attempt to calm the creature.  It only paused until the dragon had exhausted its fury and coiled back into its wary, snakelike posture.

Belle discovered that her hand was feeling its way into her pocket.  For a stone to fit into her sling, she told herself again.  But once again she pulled out the ring.  It was so sensible, she realized suddenly, to put it on and disappear from those terrible yellow eyes.  How had she not thought of it before?  Slowly, she watched her left hand lift the ring and slip it onto her right forefinger.

Immediately, the black helm snapped in her direction.  She could see pale flesh and dead white eyes through the visor, and those eyes were looking right at her.  On its right hand she could see the outline of a luminous blue ring.  She fell back against the wall, preparing to pull the band from her own finger, but a voice arrested her movement.

“I see you,” it said.  But it was not the voice of the black figure.  It was almost a whisper, yet it filled the whole cavern.  Or did it fill only her head?

“I see you,” it said again, and she could not tell whether it came from everywhere or nowhere.

“Who are you?” she asked.  She had meant to say it aloud, but the words might only have come out in her thoughts.

“You have something that belongs to me,” it said.

Belle’s hand closed into a fist around the ring on her finger.

“That’s right,” said the voice.  “Give it to me.”

The Hobbit lass could only shake her head.

“Give it to me and I shall not ask how you came by it,” said the voice, and at the same time the black figure began to move toward where she cowered against the wall.

That galvanized her, and she leapt upright.  “Come one step nearer and I’ll throw it into the fire,” she said—aloud this time.  To prove her earnestness, she strode almost to the edge of the dragon’s pit, her fear of the beast forgotten, and closed her left hand over the ring as though to pull it off.  She could not explain it, but she knew at that moment that the most important thing was for that voice not to get hold of her ring.

The black figure stopped.  Then, as though at a word of command that Belle could not hear, it turned back, took a single pouncing stride, and whirled back around with Thráin clamped in a choke hold and the sword against his throat.

“Give it to me,” the voice said again, “and the Dwarf may live.”

“Don’t let him have it!” Thráin cried in a strangled voice.  “Give it to me!”  He stretched one hand toward her in desperation.

If Belle gave the ring to the Dwarf, the voice would leave her.  She was sure of it.  She eased the ring over her first knuckle.  But then, without a conscious decision, she stopped.

“The Dwarf is not worthy of it,” the voice said in an almost wheedling tone.  “You know he’s not.”

Belle could see that now: the Dwarf was never meant to have such a beautiful thing. 

“That’s right,” the voice whispered.  “That’s right.”

She watched the ring glowing in the dragon-light, her thoughts falling in line with some unspoken suggestion in the air.  It belonged on another hand…a fairer hand…a hand like…hers!  The word burst upon her with the clarity of a trumpet blast.  She pushed the ring back into place.

A low rumble of wrath made Belle’s bones quiver.  Then there was a silence and she had the uncomfortable feeling of eyes traveling over her from head to toe.

“Who is this creature that vies with the will of her master?” the voice asked.

Belle did not answer.

“There is a place among my forces for such a one as yourself,” it said, its tone soothing.  “Tell me your name.”

It may have continued speaking, or it may simply have repeated what it had already said, but underneath the pacifying sound of its words, Belle suddenly became aware of an odd sensation behind her eyes.  It felt almost as though a hand had reached right through her skull and was searching for something in the secret places inside it.

Unbidden, an image of the hall of rings leapt into her mind.  She watched Thráin lift the red-gold ring from its shrine and hide it in his bosom.  With a disorienting jolt, that image was replaced by the darkness of her cell, and she heard the echo of Herumi’s voice telling her about Harad.  Another jolt, and she was watching the Orcs carry the limp body of Gandalf away into the fortress.  She felt his name rising to her lips, but at the same time, she felt the attention of the presence in her head focus sharply, waiting to hear her call out to her friend.  And she suddenly knew—knew because it was her thought and not one suggested to her—that she must not give that presence what it wanted.  She bit her tongue and forced the wizard’s name from her mind.

She felt a surge of anger that was not hers and then another jolt as the invading hand flipped through the pages of her memory, and she was looking at the dusky lawn where the Orcs had just captured her wolf pups.  She had a strong impulse to turn around, to look back up the forest path into Lórien, but she knew now that that impulse came from the same place as the voice, and she refused to let it into the realm of Galadriel.

“No?” asked the voice mildly.  “Then let us go further back.”

In quick succession, she saw the Dimrill Stair outside Moria, then the camp beside the river where the wargs had attacked; then she saw one of the inns where she and Gandalf and her brothers had stayed before the left the road.  She focused hard on river stones, firelight, cutlery—anything but her companions.  But the presence in her head was looking for something else now and did not care about them.

Her eyes were torn forcibly away from an earthenware jug and landed suddenly and seemingly at random on the family tree above the mantle in Great Smials.

“Ah,” said the voice, “Now we shall learn something.”

She tried to turn her eyes away, but this time she could not overcome the force in her mind.  With her eyes, its gaze traveled over the oldest names in the genealogy, skimming more than reading.  It drew her eyes down the yellowed parchment to the last branches at the bottom of the tree.  These would be the names of her brothers and sisters—and her own name right there among them.  In a last, desperate effort, she tore her eyes away from the words, but they only snapped into focus on the birth dates below them.

“1212,” the voice said casually, reading the birth year of Isengrim.  “1218…”  It skipped over the next several dates as though aware that they did not belong to the object of its interest.  “Here it is,” it said.  “1232.” 

Belle felt her eyes rising from the date toward her name, despite all she tried to do to stop them.  She must make those letters say something else—anything else—and yet she could not seem to envision a lie.

“In 1232,” said the voice again, “was born…”

Belle made a final desperate effort.

“…Nightshade.”  The voice spoke the word slowly, as though it could sense that the name was only a half truth.  Then it changed tactics, and Belle felt her eyes moving back up the page where she would shortly see the words, “Great Smials, The Shire.”

“…Nightshade of…”

“Bree!” Belle shouted aloud, clutching at the only place she could drag into her mind.  At the same moment, she jerked the ring from her finger and felt the hideous presence withdraw.

She stood now, the ring held tightly in her fist, blinking in the orange light and gasping like one stumbling into dawn after a battle in the dark.  She could hear the voice no longer, but the whole cavern shook with a wrath that must have come from the same source.  The dragon reared up again with another shrieking cry, and Belle saw, between the lashing wings and the billows of flame that spouted from its nostrils, a heavy black collar chaining the creature to the wall of the inner pit.  In its frenzy, the worm had nearly pulled the bolt from the wall, but for the moment it was still trapped, and she was safe from its flames.

But the black figure was still holding Thráin by the throat, and even though she could no longer see its lifeless eyes within the visor, she could feel its malice trained on her.

“Give me the ring,” it said it its harsh voice.  “My master requires it of you.”

But having striven with the master, Belle felt no impulse to obey the servant.  “Let Thráin go or I’ll throw it in the fire,” she said again, holding her fist as close to the pit as she dared.

“Don’t!” cried Thráin.  “It must survive!”

“Throw it in the fire,” the black figure said, “and the Dwarf dies.”

Belle poised her hand to throw.

“Throw it in the fire,” the figure said again, “and you will beg for death before I am through.”

Belle shuddered, but she squared her shoulders and said, “That doesn’t matter.”

“Please,” begged Thráin, holding out his hand once more.

They were caught, the three of them, in a terrible stalemate.  Belle held the ring aloft, and for a very strange, silent moment, the room grew still and she was completely alone with her thoughts.

She could put the ring back on.  That was the only sensible thing to do.  It was a ring of power, and it would make her powerful.  Had it not already enabled her to foil the will of that bodiless presence that claimed to be its master?  She could be its new master, and with it she could cast down this dark fortress and crush the evil that dwelt here.  What was one black figure to the master of the red-gold ring?  She could toss him aside as lightly as he flicked his sword.  Thráin would yet be safe.

Thráin.  The Dwarf’s outstretched hand drew her eye, small and battered and wasted.  That hand had held the ring—had held it, she could only assume, for many years before the cataclysm at Erebor.  Had that hand been able to fend off Smaug?  Had it been able to fight back against the forces that had carried him prisoner to this castle?  Where was the power of the red-gold ring when it was torn from that hand’s desperate fingers?  Where was the Dwarf’s power now, as he begged still to repossess the thing that had brought on his ruin?

“Please,” he said again.

Belladonna raised her eyes to the Dwarf’s face.  “I’m sorry, Thráin.”  And she cast the ring high into the air.

It sailed in a perfect arc, glowing red in the firelight, and all who watched it—Hobbit, soldier, Dwarf, and dragon—were captivated by its beauty.  But it reached its zenith at last and fell, as it must.  And in almost the same instant, Thráin gave a strangled cry of despair, the black figure shrieked like a wild creature, and the dragon snapped its jaws shut around the precious golden ring.

There was a shock wave like a boulder plunging into deep water, and the castle shuddered.  Belle was knocked to her knees, and before she could rise again she saw the black figure drive its sword under Thráin’s ribs in sheer spite.  The Dwarf fell and the figure stepped over him, striding across the floor toward where the Hobbit lass lay.

Now that the bloody blade was trained on her, Belle could perhaps be forgiven for rethinking her brave words and feeling that her death did matter, quite a lot.  But she did not lose her head for all her terror.  Her river stones had flown from the open pouch in her pocket as she fell and lay scattered before her knees.  Quick as a sparrow in flight, Belle had one of those stones whirling in her sling.

Faster and faster she spun it as the knight approached, and she heard its mirthless laughter mocking her defense.  But when she released the stone of the Anduin, she did not send it at the black helm; she let it fly at the bracket on the wall that held the dragon in its pit.

Her aim was true; there was a sharp metallic _ping_ and suddenly the chamber was filled with dust, ash, and flame as the glowing creature raised a hurricane with its beating wings—and lifted heavily into the air.

Belle wedged herself into the angle between wall and floor, shielding her face with her arms, but she could still see the scene before her.  The black figure stumbled away from the horrifying funnel of beast and wind and fire, but it was not fast enough.  A jet of flame spouted at its feet and its robe caught fire like a rag soaked in pitch.  With a wail—whether of pain or of fury, Belle could not tell—the figure fell away and fled through the archway that led to the dark passage.  Its cries echoed down the stone long after the light from its burning robes disappeared into the darkness.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not everyone can survive an adventure, but maybe they can be saved.

The dragon’s roaring wings had lifted it out of the well and into the echoing heights above, where the thunderous crashing proved the beast was trying to tear a way out into the open.  Heedless of the falling debris, Belladonna fled across the open floor and threw herself onto her knees at Thráin’s side.

The Dwarf was still alive, his breath rasping in his throat, but his blood pooled in an ever wider stain on the pale stones, and Belle knew there was no saving him.  So she drew his head into her lap, stroking his matted hair as she would a child in a fever.

“Thorin,” he gasped.  “Thorin.”

“Shh,” Belle said.  “It’s all right.  Thorin is safe.”

This seemed to comfort him for a moment, and he lay still, his eyes idly following the rain of burning embers that fell all around them.  Then, quite suddenly, he turned his gaze on her and fixed her with a piercing stare.  “Belladonna Took,” he murmured, and for the first time, she was sure he was seeing her clearly.

“Belladonna Took,” he said again, struggling to raise himself onto his elbow, “you must give this to my son.”  He slipped his hand inside his tunic, and for a moment she thought he was reaching for the ring.

“Thráin,” she began, unsure of how to tell him the beautiful thing had been destroyed.

But he withdrew from his breast not an empty hand but a roll of parchment and an ornate iron key. 

“Give them to Thorin,” he rasped, pressing them into her hands.  “I’ve hidden them, all this time.  They are the only heirlooms I leave to the rightful King Under the Mountain.”

He fell back against her knees, spent.

“I promise he shall have them,” Belle said.  “I promise on my honor as a Took.”

Thráin nodded.  “Then that is enough.”  He was silent for a moment, and then, as a new thought crossed his failing mind, he sighed, “Dís.  How I wish I could have seen my children again.  Tell them…tell them….”

But his thoughts seemed to slip like water through his fingers, and his eyes lost their focus.  “I go to the halls of my fathers,” he murmured, “and I do not now fear their welcome.  Farewell, Belladonna Took.”  And he closed his eyes.

Belle bent over his ravaged head and her tears left shining streaks in the blood and grime.  “Farewell, Thráin,” she whispered to the ears that could no longer hear her.

How long she knelt there over the body of the fallen king, she would never know.  But at last a burning ember fell upon her bare arm and brought her back to herself.  Like one waking from sleep in an unfamiliar place, she raised her head and looked about at the chaotic scene of destruction around her. 

Debris was falling in faster and faster, as the dragon shredded the ceiling above, and the rubble that had at first been only pebbles and bits of timber had now turned to great stones and burning brands.  It was a wonder she had not been crushed as she sat unawares, but if she stayed longer, she certainly would be.

Gently, she eased Thráin’s head off of her knees.  There was nowhere to carry him to even if she had been able, so she straightened his bent body and folded his hands carefully over his breast.  Smoothing his tangled black hair, she thought his face looked peaceful for the first time since she had laid eyes on him, and she hoped that whatever spark of him had escaped this ruin would find its way to a deathless hall worthy of a king.

Touching his brow once more in farewell, she stowed the parchment and key next to her heart and stood up.  It was time to leave.

Suddenly, from the black entrance behind her, she heard the distant shouts and curses of a band of Orcs—whether ordered to capture her or sent to deal with the dragon she could not guess.  The shouting grew louder, accompanied by a cacophony of pounding feet and clanking armor, and she cast her eyes about with the wild look of a cornered rabbit.  There was no way out.

But Hobbits, though they bear some resemblance to rabbits in appearance and habitation, are perhaps more like badgers than hares when cornered, and after the first wave of panic swept through her, Belladonna fitted another stone into her sling, planted her feet, and prepared to fight her desperate last stand.

In a burst of shouts and flashing blades, a dozen Orcs poured through the archway.  But at that same moment, drawn by the noise and perhaps by the desire for revenge upon the hands that had chained it, the fire-drake swooped out of the darkness above and spouted a great rush of flame at the grey figures at the door.

Three fell almost instantly, and the others fled in all directions, but they were replaced almost as quickly by a new rush of troops flinging themselves through the archway and clambering over the bodies of their comrades.  Two bent heavy black bows and let fly long, spear-like arrows at the flying worm.  The points rebounded off its glowing scales like pebbles fired at a stone tower.  Then one bent its bow at Belle.

Just when she was ready to let fly from her little sling, her line of sight was cut off by the sweep of a massive, taut-skinned wing as the dragon roared past her in pursuit of a fleeing Orc.  The chain still dangling from the creature’s neck passed inches from her hand, and almost without thinking, Belle loosed her stone without aiming it and seized the chain instead.

Instantly, she was jerked off her feet and carried up into the air as the dragon, incensed by the continued volleys of arrows, circled the chamber once, spewing flame over all things that moved, and then shot up toward the unseen ceiling far above.

Up, up they went, and Belle cast one fearful glance down at the receding floor of the pit.  But what caught her eye was not the surviving Orcs still firing their arrows blindly into the air but the bottom of the well where the dragon had been chained.  There, within a ring of burning rock and rubble, lay nine perfectly smooth stones the mottled color of a marsh at nightfall.  Not stones, Belle corrected herself as she continued to soar upward.  Eggs.  Nice enormous eggs.

But she had no leisure to think more of them just then, because suddenly the vertical rush ceased and the billow of steaming air in the dragon’s wake washed over them both.  They had reached the roof, and the dragon still had work to do.

Beating its wings awkwardly, holding itself still in the air like an enormous red bat, the creature applied its jaws, its massive limbs, and its endless flame to the layers of stone and timber that separated it from the night outside.  Belle clung to the chain, trying to make herself as small a target as she could for the rubble flung down from above—and not entirely succeeding.

Her sweating palms began to slip inexorably down the chain, link by link, no matter how she tried to hold on.  Her hands were within an arm’s length of the end and she was looking at a sickening five-fathom plunge into the flames below when Belle felt a huge rush of cold air, and the dragon crashed through the gap in the roof and burst into the night.

 

At first the Hobbit lass could see nothing in the chill darkness except for the wings and belly of the fire-drake, illuminated by the flames it had left behind in the roofing.  But as she caught her breath and looked down, she began to make out the lights of torches, moving every which way on the parapets and in the courtyards below.  The fortress was in an uproar, and Belle, thinking of the shock wave that floored her upon the destruction of the ring, suspected that it was more than just the doing of the dragon.

The worm itself was not yet ready to cede its part in the chaos, though, and when it spotted a party of Orcs running along the parapet of the outer wall, it folded its wings and plunged toward them in a sickening dive, Belle trailing along behind on her chain like a knot at the end of a kite’s tail.

Down they sped, and at the last moment, the creature opened its wings and swooped along the walkway, spouting flame at the Orcs that fled shrieking and cursing before it.  The broad flagstones were only a dozen feet below them, and Belle guessed that she would never have a better opportunity to disembark from this most hazardous mode of transportation.  Bracing herself, she closed her eyes, let go of the chain, and fell in a spinning, sprawling tumble onto the parapet.  The dragon swept on, unheeding.

When the crenellated wall of the parapet brought her to an abrupt halt, Belle lay for a long moment waiting for her body to cease humming from the impact.  When she could see clearly again, she sat up and checked herself matter-of-factly for damage.  Scraped knees, burned knuckles, a numb spot on the back of her head that would surely become very painful when the feeling returned to it, but no broken bones.  And, she discovered, clutching in belated panic at the inner pocket of her tunic, the scroll and key were still safe.

Next problem: where was she?  Moving stiffly, Belle got to her feet and peered through a gap in the wall toward the outer defenses.  Two or three levels below, she could see the dim outline of the single main bridge, backlit by the starlight reflecting off the moat.  Escape was just a stories away.  But how could she reach it?

Just then, there was a crash that shook the stone beneath her feet, and firelight flooded the bridge.  Someone had thrown open the fortress gate—thrown it open, or battered it down.  The firelight on the stone was instantly sliced apart by the long, leaping shadows of a great mass of bodies tumbling from the gate.  Was it a sortie, or a rush of Orcs fleeing the dragon?  Belle gripped the parapet’s wall, her breath coming fast.  Neither!  It was a battle—a battle between Orcs against a mob of Men and Dwarves and Elves.  And at the head of the press were a dark-skinned youth and a white-bearded wizard, and at their elbows were two great, snarling wargs.

“Gandalf!” Belle cried out.

Somehow, despite the distance and the din, the wizard heard her.  His head tilted upward, searching for her in the darkness, and she waved her little hands to catch his eye.

“Jump!” he shouted to her, thrusting at an Orc with an ugly blade that he must have wrested from his enemies.  “Jump into the moat!”

Belle stared at him, open-mouthed.  “But I can’t swim!” she called back.

“Fool of a Took!” was his response.  “Jump or be left where you are!”

Belle might have found something else to say in response, but at that moment, twenty feet away, the door of a guard house flew open and the Hobbit lass found herself facing two heavily armored Orcs.

There was nothing for it.  She hoisted herself up into the crenellation, teetered dizzily for a moment, and then, hearing the clanking of the Orcs running toward her, flung herself out into space.  It is doubtful whether any Hobbit, bred as they were to dry land and burrows, had ever done anything braver.

Down, down she fell, unable to see the moat rushing up to snatch her, but just as she began to wonder if she would ever reach the bottom, her bare feet smashed into the water with the force of stone on stone, and she closed her eyes just as the moat slammed shut over her head.

At first the shock of the cold was so great that her limbs went as rigid as a statue’s, but as she sank ever deeper, what little was left of her senses sent a rush of panic through her body and she lashed wildly out at the water like a mouse battling the coils of a snake.

It made no difference.  Down she went, faster than she would have thought possible, and she looked up with despair at the circles of torchlight growing smaller and smaller above her.  This was the end.  She stopped struggling and closed one hand over the treasures at her breast.  I’m sorry, Thráin, she thought sadly.

Then the circles of light overhead were interrupted, shattered into shimmering pieces and then blocked altogether by two massive bodies plunging toward her.  Almost on the brink of oblivion, Belle wondered idly what was going on but could not muster the interest to care—until her trailing fingers brushed against a shoulder covered in long, tarry hair.

Feeling shot back into her body and her mind snapped back into awareness.  Her hands closed on fistfuls of that shaggy hair, and she felt the back of her tunic pulled taught by a firm grip.  Then she was going back up, toward the shimmering torchlight, out of the darkness and into the cold, blessed, life-giving air.

Belle’s head broke the surface and she gasped like a newborn baby.  The wargs came up beside her, shaking the water from their ears and propelling her with their quick, doglike paddling toward the far shore.  Only when they had dragged her quite out of the water and up the steep bank did Foxglove let the back of her tunic drop from his jaws.  Belle loosed one hand from Lily’s fur only to fasten it on Foxglove’s instead, pulling the two great beasts into a dripping, sobbing embrace.

“No time for pleasantries!” came the familiar, impatient voice from above her.  “The Orcs won’t be far behind.  Quickly now!”

And Belle found herself being pulled to her feet by two pairs of hands—one small and brown, one long-fingered and gnarled. 

“Herumi,” she gulped.  “Gandalf.”

“I said pleasantries later!” the wizard barked.  “Can you run?”

Belle’s feet and ankles throbbed with the impact of her fall into the moat, but again she found them unbroken.  “Yes,” she said.

“Then run!”

The five of them—wizard, Hobbit, girl, and wargs—fled into the woods.  They were joined in their flight by Elves, Dwarves, and Men, all flying from the dark castle.  Behind them they could still hear the roar of flame and the shrieks of Orcs that had been set alight by dragon fire.  Belle turned around just long enough to see the red-and-gold creature rise above the walls of the fortress, spew one final gout of flame onto the wretches below, and take off in a ball of glowing smoke into the night sky.

But there were sounds below the fortress too, sounds closer at hand: running feet, clanking armor, twanging bowstrings.  Twice, Belle heard the stomach-turning thud of arrow striking flesh and the crash of a body falling into the underbrush.  The escapees were racing all around them, each cut off from the others in the dark, each hoping against hope that the blind arrows might miss them one more time.

The metallic clanking grew louder, and the thunder of pursuing feet made the earth shudder.

“There are too many of them,” Herumi gasped, “and we have been caged too long.  They will outrun us.”

“We don’t have to outrun them,” Gandalf replied.  “We only have to keep ahead of them until—”

“Until what?” Belle pressed him, feeling the air burning in her lungs.

At that moment, an arrow whizzed by her head.  Then another.  But they came from up in front of them.  Two strangled cries not far behind told them that the shafts had found their mark in Orc flesh, and their pursuers were now two fewer.

“Until that,” said the wizard as they burst through the line of trees and into a frost-bound clearing.

Before them was a company of two dozen Elves in white and gold, dazzling as sudden moonlight after a storm.  Each Elf was armed with a long, light bow, and each bow was trained on the woods.

One by one, the surviving captives stumbled out into the clearing, and one by one the Orcs that dogged their steps fell lifeless into the brush.  Not a single Orc in the hunting party returned with news of the rout to their master in the scorched, smoking towers.  The Necromancer suffered a defeat that night from which he could not soon recover.  Recover he did, as readers of the Red Book know, but it was not until long after the days of Belladonna Took that his shadow spread again to trouble the deeps of Mirkwood.

 

It was near dawn when the Elves of Lórien declared the immediate threat to have passed and traded their bows for bandages, moving quietly among the dozens of wounded refugees to offer healing where they could and comfort where they could not.  In this calm that succeeded the hazards of the night, Belladonna (who up to that point had occupied herself as a water-bearer for the wounded) picked her way among the figures huddled on the grass to find her friends.

She did not discover that Herumi’s shoulder had been pierced by a spear until she came upon Gandalf busily binding the wound. 

“It’s not deep,” Herumi assured her.  “Nor is it poisoned; I would have felt the effects by now.”

But Belladonna looked from the face of her friend to the stains on Gandalf’s long fingers, more black than red in the half-light, and—more to her credit than to her shame—abruptly burst into tears.

“I couldn’t save him, Gandalf,” she sobbed as girl and wizard and wargs pressed around her in concern.

“Thráin?”

Belle wept even harder at the sound of his name, but when she could again draw enough breath to speak, she poured out the whole sad story, and they listened without interruption.  The tale outlasted her store of tears, and by the end, the Hobbit lass slumped dry-eyed over her empty lap, drained.

“He died with honor,” Herumi said at last.  “No Man or Dwarf could ask for more.”

“Unless it was to live,” Belle pointed out.

Herumi laid a hand gently on her shoulder in a gesture of sympathy, then moved off to find water and food.  Gandalf stayed, sitting next to the Hobbit on the grass and letting his eyes wander over the people they could now see more clearly in the growing light.  How much he knew or guessed of the truth about the Necromancer and those rings he did not say.

What he did say was this: “Thráin died with more than honor.  He died the master of himself, and he had not been that for long, long years.  Long before he was captured by the Necromancer, if what I believe is true.  You gave that to him, Belladonna Took, and that, perhaps, is more important than life.”

“I should have done something,” she said.  “All the time that voice was in my head, Thráin was standing right there, being strangled by the black soldier.  How could I let that happen?”

Gandalf, too, laid a hand on her shoulder.  “Don’t find fault with yourself in that, for there are forces in this world that few can resist or turn aside, and you did what perhaps no one else in that moment could have done: you kept your secrets.”

“Why did he want my name anyway?”

The wizard pursed his lips, making his mustache bristle.  “The important thing, I think, is that you didn’t give it to him.  I’m not happy that he knows your age, and I’m even less happy that his eye has been drawn toward Bree, but there’s nothing to be done about that just now.  You did admirably, Belle.  Be satisfied with that.”

The Hobbit lass was silent for a while, pondering not what the wizard had just said but raging internally against the cruel facts of mortality.  Finally she murmured, “I’m glad the dragon escaped, at least.”

Gandalf grunted.  “Leave it to a Hobbit to set loose a dragon on the world, as if we needed another.”

“She was a prisoner just like them,” Belle said, taking in the refugees with a sweep of her hand.  “Isn’t it enough that she lost her whole brood of eggs?”

“Yes, the eggs do trouble me.  But for a different reason.  For one thing, they were not hers—at least, not wholly hers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dragon’s eggs are gold—or red, sometimes.  Never black and never green.  Whatever creatures were in those eggs, if they had dragon in their blood, they had something else as well.”

“You mean the Necromancer was breeding them?  What for?”

Gandalf gazed at the point where the treetops pierced the brightening sky.  “That is yet to be seen.”

Since it was clear he meant to say no more on the matter, Belle returned to the subject at hand.  “I don’t think you need to worry about the dragon anyway.  She’s free now, after being a slave for who knows how long.  She’ll go home to the north where no one can ever hurt her again.  Isn’t that where they say the dragons live—in the north?”

“It is,” the wizard sighed.  Then he added as if to himself, “And perhaps there is a place in the story for dragons as well.”

“What story?”

Gandalf looked at her.  “Why, _the_ story.  But come now, my lass.  Don’t you want to hear how your friends passed the evening?”

“Oh, yes!” Belle gasped, coming back to herself.  “How did Herumi find you?  And when did you meet back up with Lily and Foxglove?  And how did you free the prisoners?  And how did the Elves come to be waiting in the wood for us?”

“Just like a Took,” Gandalf grumbled fondly, “all questions and no patience.  How I wish I had my pipe, but it fell into the moat when we were taken.”  So, pipeless, the wizard leaned his elbows on his knees and told her of the ransacking of Dol Guldur.

 

Gandalf had been cast into a cell deep in the bowels of the fortress, and when she asked, he admitted to Belle that he had been “questioned,” by the very same black-robed figure who had tormented Thráin.  But when she pressed him for the tale, he waved her off.  “Don’t concern yourself with troubles you can’t help,” he told her.  “Suffice it to say that I know a good deal more now about how things stand in Mirkwood than I did before I met him, but he knows no more of how things stand in the world outside than he did before he met me.”

He spoke airily enough, but when he had finished the statement he fell silent, his gaze turned inward and his face drawn.

Belle resisted the impulse to take his hand to comfort him.  In her captivity, she had guessed that either she had been forgotten by all but the jailor or that Gandalf was standing between her and the tortures of the Necromancer.  She knew now which it was.

“Thank you,” she whispered, not sure of what else she could possibly say.

To her surprise, he smiled.  “It’s nice to be thanked, every once in a while.  So let me return the favor: thank you—for sending that wonderful little Southron to rescue me.  Shall I continue?”

Belle sat forward.  “Yes, please.”

Perhaps a week before Belle’s chance encounter with Foxglove, the wizard was graced with his own fortunate turn: through the narrow window high in his cell crawled a little black salamander.  It had been looking, in entirely the wrong place, for a warm stone to sun on after a swim in the moat, which was almost level with Gandalf’s cell.  The wizard picked up this salamander and spoke to it words of supplication that he would not repeat to the Hobbit lass.  Then he sent it on its way again to swim back across the moat, pad slickly through the forest, and find an artery of the river Anduin that would take it to the shores of Lórien. 

This experiment in making use of a speechless creature as a means of communication worked much better than had his attempt to do the same thing with Old Jem the May before.  For beyond his hope, the little creature returned bearing word that Galadriel was sending aid.  And so it happened that the very night that Herumi went searching the dungeons for his cell, the Elves of Lórien were forming their battle line just beyond the sight of the Necromancer’s sentinels.

“How lucky that the two things happened at once!” Belle put in at this point.

“Luck?” echoed the wizard.  “Well, yes, I suppose you might call it that.”  Then he went on with his tale.

Apparently Foxglove found Lily long before Herumi had come anywhere near Gandalf’s corner of the castle.  In whatever language it is by which creatures convey meaning to one another, Foxglove apprised his sister of the news.  The two wargs then followed the girl’s scent and found Herumi creeping along a passage just around a corner from the Orcs’ mess; she knew it for what it was because she could smell the maggoty bread and stinking mutton even over the stench of rot and must that permeated the fortress’s every wall.  Right out from under the nose of two hundred feasting Orcs, the wolves guided her to an empty stairwell and down, down, down into the depths.  There, they led her to Gandalf, languishing in a lightless cell on lighter rations than what had barely kept Herumi and Belle on their feet.

“How did you get out?” Belle demanded.

Gandalf looked affronted.  “I am a wizard, you know.”

“But then why not break out sooner?  You could have rescued Thráin yourself.  Everything could have been different!”

The wizard’s look softened.  “Understand, my lass, that the black soldier had given up trying to break me.  I had been left alone for weeks, and I can’t say that the respite wasn’t deeply appreciated.  But the moment I spoke a word of command to open my cell door, I would be revealed to the Necromancer, and whatever veil of negligence or vanity had made him think me not worth his further notice would have been torn away.  There was no use in my escaping from a forgotten cell only to be captured and relocated to the Necromancer’s own torture chamber instead.  What good would that have done Thráin—or you, for that matter?  For whatever you may think of me, Belladonna Took, I am very fond of my friends.”

“I’m sorry,” Belle said, and she meant it.  “But go on with the story.  When you saw Herumi and realized there was a chance to escape, that’s when you magicked your way out of the cell.  And then?”

“Magicked,” Gandalf repeated disdainfully.  But he continued anyway.

At first he and Herumi were content to take the wargs and try to find a way out before the Necromancer found the source of the power that had awakened his vigilance.  But as they fled down corridor after corridor, they could not help but hear the groans and supplications echoing through the bars of the other cells they passed, could not help but see hands reaching out to them, held back by their rusting chains. 

Moved perhaps equally by pity and by strategy, Gandalf spoke another word of command, and all through the fortress they heard the heavy gates swinging open.

“I felt his anger then,” the wizard said, “and I knew the battle was about to be joined.  But now we, too, had an army.”

So while Belle had knelt over the dying Dwarf king and the dragon had rained down its wrath upon the Pit from which it had been freed, the Orc army of Dol Guldur had been rallied to the passageways and courtyards, fighting hand-to-hand with the prisoners that they had previously starved, whipped, and broken on their instruments of torture.  But once freed, there was none among the throng that would have preferred capture over a swift and sudden death.

“No one appreciates his freedom,” Gandalf said, “half as much as a Man who has known captivity.”

“Or woman,” Belle added, and the wizard bowed his assent.

“Two Dwarves had just made a battering ram out of a hideous statue and broken out through the main gate when, out of the sky itself, I hear a Hobbit lass calling my name,” Gandalf concluded.  “And never was I happier than when I discovered that I would not have to go back inside to try and find the travel companion I had misplaced.”

“Would you have come back for me,” Belle asked, “if I hadn’t jumped?”

Gandalf smiled.  “Belladonna Took, I knew you _would_ jump.  Now let me find us some breakfast.  And while I do that, why don’t you take these two great beasts down to the river and wash the filth of Dol Guldur off of them?  They mustn’t look like that when they present themselves to the Lady.  They’re not fit to be seen.”

But as he walked off, he patted each of the wolves affectionately on the head.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many partings, and a few reunions.

Of the five dozen captives who survived their flight from the fortress, most were Men and Dwarves, waylaid as they journeyed the pathless forests on errands that mattered only to themselves.  Belle asked diligently, but none of the Dwarves belonged to Moria or to Erebor.  And as soon as they had been bandaged and clothed by the Elves of Lórien, they accepted what they could carry of salvaged weapons and food supplies and departed almost immediately, returning to those errands that still seemed to matter after all their months or years of captivity.  The Elves may have saved their lives, but the mistrust of the Eldar ran deep in the people of the wilds, and the fear of the Lady ran deeper still.

Some of the captives were Elves of Mirkwood, and they, too, took their leave as soon as they were able.  The mistrust was less between these distant kinsmen, but the call of their homeland in the north of the wood was too strong for the golden mallorns to tempt them west.

When all the parties who could and would leave had gone their ways, there were left only the bowmen, four rescued Elves who belonged to Lórien and had been given up for lost many years ago, a wizard, a Hobbit, two wargs, and a girl from Harad.

“We shall camp here tonight,” Haldir announced to the small party still assembled on the trodden grass.  “Tomorrow we shall return to Lórien.”  He let his eyes flicker darkly in the direction of Herumi as he spoke, and Belle flushed with anger and shame at his mistrust.  So, in Hobbit fashion, she made herself willfully deaf to his tone and blind to his failure of hospitality.

“I’ll be pleased to see you meet Lady Galadriel,” Belle said loudly to Herumi as she changed the bandage on her shoulder.  Herumi had been right: the wound, though ugly, was neither deep nor poisoned, and its ragged edges were already starting to knit.

“I would like to meet her,” Herumi said, “but it is not to be.”

“Oh, don’t let Haldir turn you away.  He doesn’t speak for everyone in the Wood.”

Herumi swiveled on her knees to face the Hobbit.  “I am grateful for the rescue the Elves gave me, and if I had anything of value, I would offer it in exchange for the life they have saved.  But even the Haradrim have their pride.  I will not impose myself where I will be nothing but an unwelcome guest.  Besides,” she added, almost to herself, “I am free again, and my heart calls me home.”

“You mustn’t travel wounded,” Belle said.  “At least wait until spring; it can’t be more than a month away now.”

Herumi laughed.  “My friend, I do not walk on my shoulder, and as for spring, do you not know that the thaw comes from the south?  The closer I come to Harad, the nearer I draw to the sun.”  She closed her eyes and tipped her head back as though imagining the warm rays falling on her face.  Belle thought for the first time how terrible—how particularly terrible—must have been her captivity of in all those dark, cold months when she was a child of the lands where the sun shone always.

And so Herumi’s path was set.  But the next morning, as the party was preparing to depart, a hooded figure on a grey horse appeared suddenly in the shadow of the trees.

The alarm of the sentries was brief, for the figure immediately cast off the hood, and there sat Arwen Evenstar, her dark hair falling over her shoulders.

When Haldir hurried up to her and asked why she ventured forth onto these dangerous roads, she announced aloud to the camp, “I bring a gift to the princess of the Haradrim.  A gift from the Lady of Lórien, who wishes that no act of courage go unrewarded, if means there be by which to reward it.”

Fixing Haldir with a look that silenced whatever he might have wanted to say, she leapt lightly off the horse.  She had been using neither saddle nor bridle, but now she drew a halter from her shoulder and slid it over the animal’s nose.  Leading him into the middle of the clearing, she presented the reins to Herumi.

“His name is Arad,” she said, “which in Elvish means ‘day.’”

Herumi accepted the reins with an open mouth, gazing at the magnificent creature with the eyes of a connoisseur.  She had told Belle how devotedly the Haradrim loved their horses.  “It is fitting then,” she said when she had mastered her awe, “that I ride him back to Harad, for in the land whose name echoes his, the day is long and happy.  Convey my gratitude to the Lady Galadriel.  I wish I had something to give in return.”

Arwen laughed.  “You have already given it, child of the south, for you have returned her lost Hobbit and her missing wizard.”

 

Herumi and Belle parted with tears and many a handshake.  As the Southron rode into the lengthening afternoon, looking more like a princess now that she was robed, armed, and mounted on an elvish steed, Belle asked Gandalf, “Do you think there will ever be a time when the Elves of Lórien and the Big People of Bree and all those such places will be as friendly toward the Haradrim as they are toward each other?”

Gandalf harrumphed.  “What makes you think they’re friendly toward each other?” he asked.  Then he smiled down at her.  “But I hope so, my lass.  I do hope so.”

 

The next part of Belladonna Took’s tale involves several reunions and several partings.  She and her wargs walked again in the woods of Lórien in the company of Arwen and the Lady. The captives recovered their strength and spirit, and in the peaceful silence of the mallorn trees in winter, no troubling word reached them to disturb their convalescence.  They existed, for a time, as in the healing quiet of a restful dream.

In fact, Belle grew so careless of the outside world that she only first recalled the passage of time when the golden leaves of the mallorns began to rain down onto the forest floor like sunbeams, and in their place grew the bright yellow flowers that she had seen in their final days the autumn before.  At almost the same time, Gandalf signaled his full recovery by donning his accustomed crustiness and restless, perpetual motion.

“He will soon announce that it is time for you both to go,” Galadriel told Belle one morning as they watched the wizard rifling through a stack of maps he had insisted Celeborn spread out of him on a large table.

“I know,” Belle sighed.

“And when you return home, Belladonna Took, what will you do with your travel companions?”  The Lady gestured at Foxglove and Lily, who were happily splintering a large elk bone that one of them had unearthed in the woods.

This question had been weighing on Belle’s mind for several days now.  “I don’t know,” she admitted.  “I can’t very well take them back to the Shire.  People wouldn’t understand, and I’m not sure I could keep them out of the sheep pens anyway.  But it would be worse to turn them loose in the wild.  They have no pack, no survival skills.  They’re domesticated.  How could they ever make shift to live in the woods?”

Galadriel smiled as Foxglove ripped the bone in half from end to end with one powerful tug, but she did not contradict what the Hobbit had said.  “I think I may have a solution.”

Rising, she crossed the lawn to where Gandalf was now poring over a yellowed chronicle.  Gently, she drew a map out from the stack at his elbow and returned with it to where Belle was sitting; the wizard scarcely raised his eyes in her direction.

“What is he looking for?” Belle asked.

Again the Lady smiled.  “Everything.  But here, look at this.”  She spread the map over both their knees.

“That’s Lórien,” Belle said, recognizing the wooded intersection of the Celebrant and the Nimrodel even though the map was entirely unlabeled.  “And that’s where Dol Guldur sits, in that southwest corner of Mirkwood.”  She laid her finger gingerly on the parchment, as though she hesitated even to touch a likeness of the dark fortress.

“Yes, but do you know the areas north of your own journeys?”  Galadriel let her own slender finger run up the Anduin, which followed the line of the Misty Mountains.

“Only from stories.”

“Well, this,” said Galadriel, pointing to a stretch of the river just north of a dotted line that Belle took to be a road, “is a place that you will not have heard of in stories, though it is well worthy of them.  And perhaps it may yet find its way into the great tales.  It is called the Carrock.”

“What’s a carrock?”

Galadriel gave an elegant shrug.  “There is an outcrop of stone overlooking the river, and to the master of the lands thereabout, ‘carrock’ is the word for such a formation.”

“And who is the master?”  Belle asked.

“Perhaps no one knows his real name, and so the names he goes by do not really matter.”

“Arathorn knows him!” Belle cried, suddenly recalling the ranger’s words to Gandalf.  “He’s the one who told Arathorn about the Orcs attacking Rohan.”

“He is also a member of an ancient race, powerful and dangerous, but true as stone and just as difficult to break.  He is a master of beasts, and all manner of creature finds refuge and comfort in his home.  He speaks their language and guards them as fiercely as he guards his own life.”

Belle looked again at her wolves.  “Will they be safe with him, then?”

“All their days,” Galadriel said.  “If harm should befall them while under his care, then it would be because a cataclysm has occurred which no creature will escape, no matter who is its guardian.”

Belle blinked back the tears that stung her eyes and tried to speak matter-of-factly.  “And he knows how to care for wargs?  They’re not dogs, you know.”

Galadriel nodded solemnly as though it was natural to fear that the two great beasts now wrestling and snarling at each other in the grass might be mistaken for beagles or bloodhounds.  “If wargs have never yet been in his care, he will make it his business to learn their ways.  They will tell him themselves, I expect.”

The Hobbit lass sniffed and drew herself up.  “Then if they will consent to go, go they shall.”

 

That evening, Gandalf announced that he and Belladonna would be departing in two days’ time.  Galadriel arranged for a pair of Elves who had business in the north to escort the wargs to the Carrock, and although she did not see the exchange take place, Belle was sure that an eagle or some other speaking creature had been commissioned to inform the beast-master of his impending new charges.  All that remained was for Belle to broach the subject with the wolves.

She took them to a quiet glade that evening and managed to get them seated side-by-side, watching her expectantly with their tongues lolling from their mouths.  As she explained the situation, the tongues retreated and their panting grins turned grave.

“It’s the best thing for you,” she concluded, stroking their ruffs in reassurance. 

They stared her down, unconvinced.

“You would hate the Shire,” she added with a note of pleading in her voice.  “Dozens of pigs and sheep and not a one you were allowed to eat.” 

Their eyes did not shift. 

“The mayor might make me keep you tied up in the yard, and how would you like that?  This is the only way.”

They continued to eye her dubiously and a sense of desperation began to rise in her chest.  She could hardly force them to go if they didn’t consent.  What could she say to convince them?  She remained there on her knees in front of them, looking from one set of yellow eyes to the other, wishing there were some kinder way to teach wargs the Common Speech.  Then Lily leaned forward and thrust her wet nose under Belle’s chin.  When Belle could find no response to the gesture, the wolf did it again, then sat back expectantly.

Belle pondered this communication for several moments before its meaning burst upon her with a clarity as sure as words.  “Me?  You’re worried about me?”

Two tails beat the earth a few times.

“Oh!” Belle sighed in great relief.  “You don’t need to worry about me.  I’m a Hobbit, and Hobbits are made for the Shire.  It’s the mountains and the rivers that are strange to me.  No one ever suggests that Hobbits go on adventures and live the woods the way you two are meant to.  Well, no one but Gandalf, and you both know he’s half mad.  Don’t worry about me, dear ones.  I’m going home.”

Lily and Foxglove jumped to their feet in canine enthusiasm, tails fanning the night air like flags.  They proceeded to knock Belle over and soak her face with slobbering affection.  Thus were the wargs convinced to go north.

This parting, too, was accompanied by tears, drawn from perhaps a deeper place in Belle’s heart than the tears she had shed for Herumi.  She wondered if this made her rather a bad person, but when Gandalf bent down to pat their great heads in farewell, he did not straighten without an audible sniff, and Belle was vindicated.

 

The next parting was with the Elves of Lórien.  Arwen bade the travel companions farewell privately, pressing into Belle’s palm a little, slender chain on which hung the likeness of a mallorn leaf in fine silver.  “To remember me by,” she explained.

Belle, who still had nothing to give in return, offered instead the hope that they would meet again.

“I do not foresee it,” said the dark-haired Elf with an inward-looking expression.  “But many paths are yet uncharted, and perhaps this is not the last meeting of the kinsmen of Elrond and Took.”

Galadriel and Celeborn parted from them with more ceremony, as befitted the Lord and Lady of the Wood.  To Gandalf Galadriel gave a sturdy staff made of the fallen branch of a mallorn tree; his own staff had been lost along with his pipe.  Belle thought perhaps he would have preferred a replacement for the latter, but then, what was a wizard without a staff?

To Belle she gave a silver, silken handkerchief, which she tied around the Hobbit’s neck for the journey.  “May it serve you well,” she said with a merry smile, “for no traveler should set forth without a pocket handkerchief.”

“Will I see _you_ again, my lady?” Belle asked, unable to keep her hands from stroking the tails of the weightless fabric.

Galadriel looked at her for a moment with the expression of one who studies a map.  Then her smile returned.  “If some day you grow weary of the ways of the Shire, my heart tells me that you will find welcome again among the Elves—not east of your home, but west.  If you wish it, Belladonna Took, seek the Grey Havens.  They will not refuse you passage.”

“Passage where?” Belle asked, but the Lady only smiled again.

 

The journey of Gandalf and Belladonna back up the Celebrant in spring was a pleasant one, untroubled by Orcs or late snows, and as such it makes for a short tale.  But when they came to Dimrill Dale and climbed the stair to the eastern gate of Moria, they came upon their first check.  The arch was fallen in, and its great grey stones lay in a mound before the gate, blocking the way.

Belle ran forward in alarm, unknowingly evading Gandalf’s grasp as he reached out to stop her.

“What’s happened, Gandalf?” she cried.  “Where are the gatekeepers?  Where are the Dwarves?”

The wizard came up just behind her and stood for a moment examining the damage.  “This rock fall is not recent,” he said, stooping to brush away the debris of leaves and dust that had built up over the stones during the winter.  “Probably it happened not long after we left here in late summer.”

Belle seized a block on the top of the pile and heaved it out of the way.  “Help me shift these rocks, Gandalf.  The Dwarves might still be safe inside.”

The wizard continued to stoop over the ground, examining evidence that Belle could not see.  Finally he straightened up, holding an arrowhead and a broken shaft in his hand.

“This is from a Dwarf arrow,” he said, showing her the finely pointed tip.  “And this—” proffering the black shaft—“belonged to an Orc.  I think we can guess what happened here, and I think we can be equally confident that any Dwarf we may find inside will not be a living one.”  He sighed.  “And so the recapture of Moria was in vain.  All those lives.”  He turned his eyes to the mountains beyond, his mind clearly far away.

“Do you think Dís is dead?” Belle whispered.

The wizard went on as if he had not heard her.  “It looks as though my next adventure has been set out for me before I’ve finished this one: I must go to discover if there still remain any of the Dwarves of Khazad Dum, and to see if they can tell the tale of the second loss of Moria.”

Belle felt suddenly very tired.  But with an effort, she straightened her back and raised her head in defiance of fatigue.  “Where do we begin?”

The wizard’s gaze turned back toward her as though he were surprised to find her at his side.  “Bless you, Belladonna Took.  But that is not your adventure.  You have done your part—more than your part—and it is time that I return you to the Shire while you’re still all in one piece.”

Belle sagged as the sudden burden was just as abruptly taken away.  But at the same time, something Tookish inside of her sent a little pang of disappointment to season her relief.

“Then I should probably give you these,” she said, reaching inside her tunic and drawing out the roll of parchment and the ornate iron key.

“Thráin said they were the last heirlooms of his house,” she explained as she handed them over.

“You might have mentioned them sooner.”  The wizard took them and turned them over in his hands. 

“He said he wanted Thorin to have them,” she admitted, “but I wanted to give them to Dís.  She has as much a right to them as Thorin does.  She’s the one who tried to find him, after all.  Where was Thorin when his father needed him?”

“Where indeed?  But perhaps it would be best to honor the wishes of a dying Dwarf after all.  Who’s to say whether these will be a gift or a burden to whoever claims them in the end?”

“I haven’t opened the parchment,” Belle added.  “I expect it’s a will, or a chronicle maybe.”

“Perhaps,” Gandalf muttered, still absorbed in their study.  “But whatever they are, Thorin shall have them, if Thorin is to be had himself.”

Belle gazed into the dark gap that had once been the beautiful east gate of Moria.  “You’ll tell Dís what happened to her father, won’t you?  If you find her?  I gave her my word.”

Gandalf slid the scroll and the key into the folds of his robe, then patted her gently on the shoulder.  “She shall know how well he died,” he promised, “and how bravely you fought to save him.  And save him you did, in a way.”

Belle nodded solemnly in acknowledgment of the wizard’s promise.  The story would go on, she thought, even if she was not a part of it, and she would have to be satisfied with that.

 

At last came a reunion, with Isengrim and Isumbras.  Belle’s brothers, having seen the end of the battle against the Orcs, had spent the winter in a small village of Big People on the North-South road, between Isengard and the Gap of Rohan.  Arathorn had been their host and their healer, mending Brassy’s head wound and—probably without their knowledge—protecting them from the dangers of being Hobbits in the world of Men.

As a result, when they were reunited with their sister, they swept down upon her with all the youthful enthusiasm that Hobbits generally dedicate only to food and gardening.

“Have you heard, Belle?” Brassy cried, throwing himself into a back-slapping embrace.  “We’re war heroes, Grim and me!  You should have seen us—the deadly duo, taking on a whole company of Orcs at once!”

“With a little help,” Grim pointed out, taking over the hug once his brother had let Belle go.

“You’re taller,” Brassy observed.

“Shorter,” said Grim.

“I think it’s probably side-to-side that I’ve changed,” Belle told them.

They agreed to this but could not come to a consensus over whether she was fatter or thinner.  But the fact remained that Belladonna was changed.

Her brothers were changed too, despite their old spirits upon seeing their sister.  Belle and Gandalf stayed the night in the cottage Arathorn had secured for his and the Hobbits’ use, and she had several hours after dinner in which to observe the faces that she knew so well.  Grim lived up to his name a little more than he once had, and Brassy, even as he regaled her with exaggerated accounts of their exploits, occasionally paused to let a shadow clear from his brow at a memory he did not share.

When the Hobbit lads had finally finished their saga and collapsed into a contented sleep, Belle slipped out into the night to look at the sky and to think about all she had heard.  Gandalf joined her after hearing a briefer and more sober account from Arathorn.

“What do you think of your brothers the heroes?” he asked her, reaching unconsciously for the pipe he still did not have.

“They’re lucky they weren’t both killed,” she observed, but with more affection than affront.

“They did their father proud,” Gandalf said.  Then, after a moment’s pause, he added, “And they might eventually shut their mouths long enough to hear how you did the same.”

Belle laughed, but she found she had little desire to try to counter her brothers’ story with her own.  “I’m glad they’re proud of themselves,” she said sincerely.  “But I’m also glad they’re going home.  You see more than you ever say, Gandalf: you know that war doesn’t agree with Hobbits.”

“Belle, my lass, war doesn’t agree with anybody.” 

“True, but some folks seem happy enough to have a nodding acquaintance with it, and Hobbits aren’t among them.”

The wizard bowed his assent and then sat back against the wall of the cottage, the two of them sitting in thoughtful silence as together they watched the slow wheeling of the stars.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At last Belladonna comes to the "and back again" of her adventure.

The next day, Belle was surprised by a reunion quite beyond her expectations: Arathorn, with a secretive smile, asked her to go round the back of the cottage to feed the horses, and who met her at the gate of the yard but Old Jem the pony?  Thrush was there too, and Grim and Brassy’s sturdy little beasts as well.

“They were waiting for us when we came back through the Gap of Rohan,” Grim said with a grin.  “Since you seem to have misplaced your wolves, at least you can substitute with something less likely to eat you in your sleep.”

 

Taking their leave of Arathorn the morning after that, the party—now restored to its original composition of three Hobbits, one wizard, and no tag-alongs, started the way back up the North-South Road toward Bree.  Spring was secure now in its victory over winter, and though the nights were chill and the Hobbits had to make do with smaller suppers and fewer second breakfasts than they would have liked, there is very little to tell about their return journey.

When they arrived in Bree in mid-May, the Hobbit lads had a taste of their own medicine, so to speak—for the Big People had no interest in the foreign exploits of two Hobbits of the Shire.  Instead, as soon as they entered the Prancing Pony, they were regaled with stories of the hard winter in Bree—the hardest in many years—and, even more momentous, a sudden attack by a band of Orcs.  They had swept across the South Downs one midnight in February, burning barns and houses as they cut a swath across the frozen country toward the town.  This being the most dramatic event to occur in Bree since the carpenter’s wife had run off with the astronomy student, the Hobbit lads were soon surrounded by a pack of well-victualled Big People eager to be the first to bend the ears of these new listeners.

But Belle caught the dark look on Gandalf’s face upon hearing the news and took advantage of a pause in the narration to draw him aside.  “You don’t think they were sent by the Necromancer, do you?” she asked him.  “He wouldn’t have sent them just because he thought I was from Bree?”

The wizard sighed.  “I’m afraid that is precisely what I think.  The Necromancer, like all tyrants, is clearly not above an act of petty revenge.  And now you see how foresighted you were to hide the truth from him.”

“And how lucky I was to manage it,” Belle added.  “I’m sorry Bree suffered because of me, but the Shirefolk couldn’t have fought off a band of Orcs when they were completely unprepared for an attack.”

“Yes,” Gandalf said, “let’s call it luck.”

There was some satisfaction in hearing the alarming tale, though, for the Shirefolk of East Farthing had answered the call to muster, and, joining with the Breelanders, had played a not insignificant role in fending off the attack.  And in the list of Hobbits now made famous by the great battle of 1250 (Shire Reckoning), Belle, Grim, and Brassy had the pleasure of hearing the names of their own two sisters.

“The Old Took has two remarkable daughters,” said the innkeeper, not remembering that the three Hobbits Gandalf had just reintroduced to him were the children of this very same Took.  It was with difficulty that the wizard convinced him to include the third daughter when he praised the Tooks among his guests.  But he always followed up the statement with a shrug, adding, “Of course, that Belladonna only went off wayfaring, and no good ever comes of wayfaring Hobbits.  She was remarkable, I suppose, in her own way, but her sisters!  You should have seen her sisters.”

 

The reunion with these sisters was more agreeable than the meetings at Bree, for though Mirabella and Donnamira were bursting with their own adventures, Gerontius came bustling out of the house right on the heels of his wife and nine other children and silenced them all by the force of his overwelling pride.

“My fine boys,” he said, clapping them heartily on the shoulders as they slid off their ponies.  “My fine, brave lads.  Have some grand adventures, Gandalf?” he added by way of greeting.  Then he turned to Belle, beaming.  “My girl.”

He put both his meaty hands on her shoulders and looked her up and down with undisguisable joy.  He paused as though searching for words before saying, a little huskily, “It hasn’t been the same here without you, Belle.”  Then he cleared his throat, pushed her away affectionately, and patted Old Jem on the neck.  “Brought back my old pony, did you?  I hope he didn’t give you any trouble.  Still a bit lame on wet days, I suppose?”

Adamanta stayed true to Hobbit hospitality and insisted that the wizard who kept sweeping her family members off into danger must stay for dinner.  He accepted with an alacrity that was probably encouraged by the hope that, in addition to a good Hobbit-cooked meal, he might be provided with a spare pipe and a pouch of Old Toby.  And, of course, he was not disappointed in either expectation.

Dinner was served, ale was drunk, stories were told, and then for good measure dinner was served a second time before pudding and a smoke in front of the fire.  Belle was quiet for the most part, content to hear her brothers’ tales told over again and her sisters’ story told in their own words.  Her father would take her aside, tonight or tomorrow or the day after that, to hear her side of things free of interruption; there was no hurry now, and she was very happy.

 

The next morning, she caught Gandalf at unawares, walking in on him in their parlor as he stood in stooping meditation over their family tree.

“I didn’t know you were up,” she said.

He started guiltily and bristled.  “I’m always up before a pack of overfed Hobbits.  But your father never sleeps very late, so I thought I’d wait until he gets on his feet before I take my leave.”

Belle joined him in idle contemplation of the framed parchment over the mantle.  “Gandalf!” she cried.  “What have you done to the Tooks?”

She pointed at the birth dates of each of Gerontius’s children: every last one of them had been set forward some twenty years.

 “Well,” he huffed, “as much as I respect the Hobbit sense of history, I think you’ll agree that it would be better for there not to be a family tree that looks so very much like the one the Necromancer glimpsed in your mind’s eye.”

Belle thought about this, weighing the foreboding of her father’s dismay against the possibility of waking one night to a leering Orc hovering over her bed.  “I’m sure my father will understand.  He’ll probably want to take it down, though, I’m afraid.  Can’t have it hanging there in plain sight when the dates are so obviously wrong.  According to this, I won’t even be born for another two years!”

“It will have its day again,” the wizard said, “in a future generation when no one remembers the difference.  Even Hobbits can’t recall everything.”

“But what about the records in Town Hall?” she asked.

The wizard looked sheepish.  “The mayor may discover that someone’s been tampering with public documents,” he confessed.  “But no one looks at those records anyway.  Or at least, they won’t until someone in future years decides the Tooks are worthy of a thoroughly researched written history.”

Belle snorted at the ridiculous thought.

But, of course, the Tooks did become the subject of histories, as did several other Shire families.  And now readers of the Red Book will understand how the genealogy recorded by Meriadoc Brandybuck came to be at such variance with the one locked within the memory of his great-great-aunt.

 

“So you’re off on another adventure,” Belle sighed as she saw Gandalf to the door an hour or two later.

“Always,” he replied.  But he paused in the act of climbing onto Thrush’s back, his attention drawn to an open-faced Hobbit lad who was making his way up the drive.  “And so, I think, are you.”

The lad waved absently as Gerontius, still tucking in his shirt, bustled past to bid the wizard a fond farewell.

“Hello, Belladonna,” the Hobbit lad said.  He hesitated, tried several times to start a sentence, then made up his mind and plunged in.  “I…I don’t know if you remember me, but I’ve been waiting all winter for you to come back.”

“Have you?” Belle said, more surprised than flattered.

“You see,” he explained, “I promised myself if you ever did come back, I’d make it my business to come over and give you a bouquet of flowers.”  He brought a handful of daisies from behind his back.

Belle did not take them right away.  “I was under the impression that wayfaring Hobbits got a bad reputation in these parts.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that!”

“You don’t mind that I’m a wayfaring Hobbit?” she repeated with an arch in her eyebrow.  “How very kind of you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the lad stammered.  “I meant I don’t mind what other people think.  Well, I do, actually.  Of course I do.  But I don’t mind when it comes to you, you see.  Because…I don’t know, really.  Because you’re…special.  I guess.”  He blushed right up into his curly brown hair.

Belle smiled despite herself and took the flowers gently from his hand.  “What’s your name, then?”

“Oh!” he cried, his blush deepening.  “I clean forgot to say.  I’m Bungo.  Bungo Baggins.”

“Well, Bungo Baggins,” said Belle, pushing open the round door and ushering him inside, “I expect I can convince you to join us for breakfast.”


	14. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s son!” (The Hobbit). After all, the road goes ever on and on....

Time marched on in Middle Earth, even in the Shire, and the Tooks lived up to their father’s reputation for unseemly behavior.  Grim and Brassy had had their share of excitement in their youth and were content to spend the rest of their days as respectable citizens, but their stories proved dangerously suggestive.  Their middle brother Hildifons set off on a journey the moment he turned thirty (which, as readers of the Red Book know, is the point at which Hobbits are said to “come of age”).  He was last seen on the North-South Road heading toward the very fields of Rohan where his brothers had made their little marks on history, but where he went from there no one knows but he, for he never returned.  Likewise, the youngest Took, Isengar, not to be outdone by his elders, committed the entirely un-Hobbit-like offense of going to sea—even before he reached the age of maturity—and never came home again.  No doubt his adventures, too, are worth a song, but as no one has yet written it, all he has now is this brief line in someone else’s story.

That someone else, though, stayed tucked away in the Shire, having earned her peace and having learned its value, though it was a lesson that she found easy to forget, especially when the sunset turned the sky to gold and the wind brought rumors of far-distant lands.  But it was not until a number of years later, after a long absence which he did not feel the need to explain, that Gandalf reappeared.  He strolled up to the gate of the fine Hobbit hole Bungo had built for Belladonna and let himself right into the garden.

“Do you have time for a cup of tea?” the wizard asked the Hobbit—no longer such a lass—who was busily hoeing the tomatoes.

At the sound of his voice, she spun around, her face as pink and bright as it had been when she first cracked the wizard’s knuckle with a slingshot.  “Gandalf, old friend!  Come in, come in!”

He stooped to follow her through the fine green-painted front door into the parlor, where he found no Bungo at all.  In fact, Bungo was in Tuckborough on business, and it is remarkable—remarkable indeed—that Gandalf happened to pass by the Shire just when he was away, for Bungo hated travel and left home only once every two or three years, returning to his own hearth and armchair as fast as ever he could.  Instead of the Hobbit of the house, Gandalf found in the parlor a sturdy cradle with a sturdy Hobbit infant asleep inside it.

“And who is this?” Gandalf asked as Belle brought in the tea things and set the kettle on to boil.

She joined him at the side of the cradle and looked down affectionately.  “This is Bilbo,” she said.  Then she bent to scoop him up in an armful of blankets for the wizard to examine more closely.

“And this is what you’ve been doing with your time since I left?” the wizard asked with his familiar gruffness, even as he smiled at the sleeping face.

“Well, it’s remarkably time-consuming,” Belle pointed out, “if you didn’t know.”

Without raising his head, Gandalf looked up at her from under his bushy eyebrows.  “Quite happy and content, are we?”

“Yes,” Belle said thoughtfully.  “Yes.  I am very happy.  You know, Gandalf, when the Old Took said all those years ago that he was ready for a different kind of adventure—one that happened at home and not abroad—I didn’t understand him.  I think I do now.  There’s nothing like having a fine Hobbit lad like Bilbo to love.  Nothing.  But all the same….”

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing,” Belle sighed.  “We can’t have everything.  That’s all.”

Gandalf did not respond to that.  He returned his attention to the baby, who was now stirring and turning his inquisitive brown eyes upon the strange, scraggly character who leaned over him.  The wizard reached out and laid a hand on the child’s head—a hand that was twice the length of Bilbo’s little face.

“You know,” he said, “I think this one, too, may be in for some adventures.  Yes, sometime I think Bilbo may be a very special Hobbit indeed.”

Belle sighed.  “Gandalf, do you ever think mothers get tired of hearing that it’s their children who will be great, and never themselves?”

Gandalf harrumphed.  “You ought to try being a wizard sometime.”

 

And yet Belladonna Took’s adventures were not over after all.  Many years later, when she and Bungo were entering what was considered by Hobbits to be the respectable old age of their mid-80s, Bilbo returned one morning from one of his country rambles to find his father asleep in the fireside armchair—and his mother nowhere to be seen.

He conducted a search of Bag End, first methodically, then with increasing alarm.  When he had opened the last cupboard and still failed to find any sign of her, he woke Bungo with some trepidation and alerted him of the disappearance of his wife.  And it might be surprising given his solid, respectable character, but the good old Hobbit took it remarkably well.

“You won’t find her round here, my lad,” he laughed in a voice roughened by age.  “She’s gone to the Grey Havens.”  He chuckled again at the thought.  “Leave it to a Took to run off with the Elves.  Embarrassing girl.”

And that was that.  The Shire was all abuzz for a few weeks about the mysterious vanishment of the third-most-famous Hobbit woman in the region, but then a shingle fell off the roof of the mill and knocked the good mayor clean unconscious, and the Shire suddenly had something more urgent to talk about.  Bungo would never take up the subject either, and neighbors soon learned to stop asking. 

In fact, the story of the Old Took’s remarkable daughter was in danger of being quite forgotten until Bilbo, young though he was, showed his first signs of becoming what he would become in spades much later in life: a thorough-going historian.  Intrigued by the discovery of his mother’s elvish connections, he carefully gathered up what he could of the threads of her early life and preserved her biography in a little portfolio that he kept in his grandmother Adamanta’s old wedding chest.  He had to work on hints and rumors, though, for his uncles and grandfather were gone by then, and the only sources who could have told him the whole (namely, a she-Dwarf, a princess of Harad, a dark-haired Elf, a golden-haired Elf, two wargs, and a wizard) were not only beyond his reach but beyond his knowledge at the time he began writing the piece.

It was not until he retired to Rivendell at the age of eleventy-one that Bilbo had the time and the opportunity to fill in the rather wide gaps in his mother’s story, and even when he had, he did not include the little portfolio in the materials that he gave his nephew for the purpose of compiling the Red Book.  Perhaps the history was too personal for him to want to share; perhaps he feared that the tale would not be believed; perhaps he was simply very old and forgot where he had stowed the portfolio.  And how came to light in the end is a matter of some debate; the best suggestions generally have something to do with the intervention of a certain old man with a tall hat, a long beard, and bushy grey eyebrows.

What we do know is that Bungo’s word was the last the Shire ever heard of the matter—but not, perhaps, the last Bilbo ever saw of Belladonna Took.

 

The End


End file.
